Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Definition
By Mayo Clinic staffCardiac rehabilitation — also called cardiac rehab — is a customized program of exercise and education, designed to help you recover after a heart attack, from other forms of heart disease or after surgery to treat heart disease.
Cardiac rehabilitation is often divided into phases that involve monitored exercise, nutritional counseling, emotional support, and support and education about lifestyle changes to reduce your risks of heart problems. The goals of cardiac rehabilitation are to help you regain strength, to prevent your condition from worsening and to reduce your risk of future heart problems.
Cardiac rehabilitation programs increase your chances of survival. Both the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology recommend cardiac rehabilitation programs.
- Cardiac rehabilitation. American Heart Association. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4490. Accessed July 2, 2009.
- Cardiac rehabilitation. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/rehab/rehab_all.html. Accessed July 2, 2009.
- Balady GJ, et al. Core components of cardiac rehabilitation/secondary prevention programs: 2007 update. Circulation. 2007;115:2675.
- Thomas RJ, et al. AACVPR/ACC/AHA 2007 performance measures on cardiac rehabilitation for referral to and delivery of cardiac rehabilitation/secondary prevention services. Circulation. 2007;116:1611.
- Williams MA, et al. Clinical evidence for a health benefit from cardiac rehabilitation: An update. American Heart Journal. 2006;152:835.
