Abstract 18567: Impact of Participation in Cardiac Rehabilitation on Long-term Survival after Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

Background: Although cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is recommended after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, there are still deficient data about the long-term benefit of CR after CABG. Methods: We analyzed a single-center prospective registry, which included patients who had undergone CABG between 2000 and 2011. We evaluated the relationship between participation in CR and long-term survival. We identified 3975 patients (62.4±9.1 years old, 74.3% male) who survived for at least 3 months after surgery. Results: Of these, 2419 (60.9%) participated in phase I of CR while hospitalized, and 383 (9.6%) participated in phase II of CR at an outpatient clinic. During a median follow-up of 6.0 years (IQR, 4.3 to 9.5), the all-cause Kaplan-Meier mortality rate was 28.8% (616 deaths). Based on the propensity score matching method, participation in phase I CR was associated with a 20% relative risk reduction in all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.80; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.64 to 0.98; p=0.043) and a 40% reduction in all-cause mortality after participation in phase II CR (HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.40 to 0.90; p=0.012). After multivariate Cox-proportional analysis, participation in any CR phase was associated with a significant reduction in mortality (HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.64 to 0.93; p=0.006 in phase I CR and HR, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.39 to 0.84, p=0.004 in phase II CR). Conclusions: CR participation is associated with a significant reduction in all-cause mortality after CABG. As well as outpatient CR participation, early CR during hospitalization has a beneficial impact in reducing mortality.