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Cardiac Rehabilitation: Underrecognized/Underutilized

  • Prevention (L Sperling and D Gaita, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Unfortunately, too many patients continue to rely on costly coronary revascularization procedures, cardioprotective medications, or both, as first-line strategies to stabilize the course of coronary heart disease. However, these palliative therapies do not address the foundational or most proximal risk factors for coronary disease, that is, unhealthy dietary habits, physical inactivity, and cigarette smoking. Because most acute myocardial infarctions evolve from mild-to-moderate coronary artery stenosis (<70 % obstruction), rather than at the more severe obstructions that are commonly treated with coronary revascularization, these findings help explain the inability to demonstrate a reduction in acute cardiac events in most studies examining coronary artery bypass graft surgery and/or percutaneous coronary interventions. The delivery of comprehensive cardiovascular risk reduction, including exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation as an integral component, offers patients a bona fide treatment intervention to prevent recurrent cardiovascular events and the need for repeated revascularization procedures, while simultaneously providing referring physicians with ongoing surveillance data to potentially enhance their medical management.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Brenda White, a punctuator par excellence, for her assiduous and laborious checking of references, and for her meticulous preparation of this manuscript.

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Conflict of Interest

Barry A. Franklin and Jenna Brinks each declare no potential conflicts of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation, William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, USA

    Barry A. Franklin PhD, MAACVPR, FACSM, FAHA & Jenna Brinks MS

  2. Internal Medicine and Biomedical Engineering, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, Rochester, MI, USA

    Barry A. Franklin PhD, MAACVPR, FACSM, FAHA

  3. Beaumont Health Center, Cardiac Rehabilitation, 4949 Coolidge Highway, Royal Oak, MI, 48073, USA

    Barry A. Franklin PhD, MAACVPR, FACSM, FAHA & Jenna Brinks MS

Authors
  1. Barry A. Franklin PhD, MAACVPR, FACSM, FAHA
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  2. Jenna Brinks MS
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Correspondence to Barry A. Franklin PhD, MAACVPR, FACSM, FAHA.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Prevention

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Franklin, B.A., Brinks, J. Cardiac Rehabilitation: Underrecognized/Underutilized. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 17, 62 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-015-0422-x

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