The cardiac/pulmonary rehabilitation service delivers specialist assessment, planning and care to encourage and support patients through an 6 – 8 week programme of exercise and education, helping them to achieve and maintain optimal physical and psychological health.
Pulmonary rehabilitation:
Pulmonary rehabilitation has been proven to increase exercise capacity and health status in people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) who have significant self reported exercise limitation assessed by MRC dyspnoea scale3-5
NICE guideline 101 states pulmonary rehabilitation should be offered to people who consider themselves functionally disabled – MRC dyspnoea 3 or above
The programme can improve exercise capacity in people with a variety of respiratory conditions other than COPD that affect activities of daily living such as bronchiectasis and interstitial lung disease or COPD MRC dyspnoea 2
Cardiac rehabilitation:
Cardiac rehabilitation is recommended in NICE clinical guideline 172 on Myocardial Infarction (MI) – secondary prevention
It is beneficial in reducing mortality and morbidity for people following an acute MI and people with coronary heart disease
People with stable chronic heart failure are offered a supervised exercise based programme that includes education and psychological support