Abstract

Introduction: Cardiac rehabilitation is a way of improving the quality life of heart failure patients.

Aim: Determining the effect of physical activity on the quality of life of patients with heart failure.

Methods: This study was conducted on 34 patients affected by heart failure with an ejection fraction of less than 40%. The patients followed both psychological and nutritional consultations in the beginning of the program. The patients participated in 24-32 sessions of physical activity three times a week, each time lasting 1-1.5 h. Each session consisted of 20 min of warming up, 20-40 min of aerobic exercises, 5 min of cooling down, and 20 min of relaxation. Physician’s visit, exercise test, echocardiography, fat and blood sugar profile tests were conducted for all patients before and after the rehabilitation program. The Life Quality Form SF-36 was filled out for them and the data were analyzed using the SPSS.

Results: Our findings showed that there was a statistically significant increase in the mean score of the patients’ life quality after rehabilitation. Also, the comparison of the scores of the eight aspects of patients’ life quality before and after rehabilitation revealed that life quality improved in the following directions: physical functioning, limitation of physical health, limitation of psychological health, energy, social functioning, and physical pain. All differences were statistically significant yet, the difference regarding the aspects of psychological health and general well-being were not significant.

Conclusion: Cardiac rehabilitation is effective on improving the life quality of cardiac failure patients.