Exercise based rehabilitation for heart failure

People with heart failure can experience marked reductions in their activities of daily living and health-related quality of life because of their restricted heart capacity. This can reduce their ability to exercise, which can further reduce fitness making their symptoms worse. Chronic heart failure is also associated with a substantially increased risk of death. The review found that for people with mild to moderate systolic heart failure there was neither a reduction or an increase in the risk of death with exercise. However, following exercise training there was a reduction in hospital admissions due to the systolic heart failure. In both the short and longer term, exercise training programmes improved health-related quality of life compared to usual care without the exercise. The kinds of exercise programmes studied varied greatly but were largely aerobic (such as brisk walking). We found no evidence to suggest that exercise training programmes cause harm.