Effects of a Cardiac Rehabilitation Program on Health Behavior and Physiologic Parameters for Myocardial Infarction Patients

Jeong, Hye Sun

Abstract

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a cardiac rehabilitation program for patients with myocardial infarction. METHOD: The subjects were 45 myocardial infarction patients(22 for experimental group and 23 for the control group). Data were collected through questionnaire survey, blood test, and the treadmill test, between October 1, 1999 and December 31, 2000. As for data analyses, paired and unpaired t-test and x2 test were adopted using the SAS program. RESULT: 1. The post-test revealed that increase in compliance score of health behavior was significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group. 2. The increase in HDL cholesterol was significantly higher in the experimental group than in the control group, in the post-test. 3. The experimental group showed significantly higher duration of exercise time and maximal METs than the control group after the program.
CONCLUSION
The above findings indicate that a cardiac rehabilitation program was effective in increasing compliance of health behaviors, serum HDL cholesterol level, duration of exercise time, and maximal METs in patients with myocardial infarction. Accordingly, we can adopt the individualized cardiac rehabilitation programs as a nursing intervention.