Cardiovascular rehabilitation in patients with myocardial acute infarct

Abstract

The cardiovascular rehabilitation has imposed the criteria that it is a favourable way for the recuperation of the patients presenting acute myocardial infarct. The general objective of our study was comparing the results of the stress tests made to patients with an acute myocardial infarct before and after the cardiovascular rehabilitation. We carried out an interventional, longitudinal, prospective study at the Surgical-clinical Teaching Hospital Comandante Faustino Pérez Hernández, of Matanzas, in the period between January and December 2005. We applied a stress test to the 38 patients who were part of the sample before discharging them, and it was compared with another applied three months after they began the cardiovascular rehabilitation. We found a significant decrease of the positivity of the tests: 45 % initially and 24 % three months after the physical training began. Although the maximum tolerated charge significantly increased, the displacement of the ST segment stayed the same at the end of the study. Alterations during the test like hypertensive reaction, typical pre-cordial pain and the presence of arrhythmias decreased significantly at the end of the study. Of the 38 patients that began the study, 37 were at I and II functional classes of the New York Heart Association scale three months later. Making the stratification of the risk we found that there was a significant increase of the low risk category (LR) at the expenses of the high risk (HR). We arrived to the conclusion that there was a significant improvement of the patients participating in the program of cardiovascular rehabilitation from the exercise stress point of view.