Rationale:
Contemporary cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs provide comprehensive cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk reduction interventions aimed at the control of multiple risk factors. Guidelines are available on goals for each risk factor. However, no comprehensive gender-specific data are available on the percentage of participants who are not already at recommended goal risk factor levels on entry into a contemporary phase 2 CR program.
Objectives:
In this multi-center study, we compared the percentage of participants not at goal for select risk factors in male versus female patients at entry into a phase 2 CR program.
Methodology:
Subjects were 11,148 consecutive male (Group A; n = 7,725; age = 65+/-11 years) and female (Group B; n = 3,423; age = 66+/-12 years) patients who enrolled in a phase 2 CR program at 30 centers in the United States after May 16, 2001 (i.e., the publication date of the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III Guidelines). Risk factors were evaluated using standardized procedures.
Results:
Results are shown in the table.
Conclusion:
These data indicate that multiple risk factors are often inadequately controlled at entry into a contemporary phase 2 CR program. Our findings further indicate that gender-specific differences exist for multiple risk factors. These data are relevant to CR programs when prioritizing, designing, and developing comprehensive risk reduction interventions.