Exercise and Sports in the Therapy of Chronic ­Diseases – Coronary Heart Disease

Despite increasingly advanced diagnostic and therapeutic ­methods, coronary heart disease and myocardial infarction continue to be by far the leading cause of death worldwide. This makes it all the more important in this context to make full use of known but far from optimally used therapeutic measures. Adequate physical activity in everyday life and addi­tional targeted training lead to an evidence-based ­improvement in quality of life, a reduction in morbidity and above all to a ­significant reduction in cardiac and overall ­mortality. However, an accurate risk assessment of the individual patient with consistent training recommendations and monitoring is crucial in medical training advice. Today’s sports ­recommendations for coronary heart disease have ­become much more liberal than before and allow patients with a ­relatively low risk of sudden cardiac death to do virtually any kind of exercise. This progressive posture, according to ­optimal risk assessment, is important, as newer data also show a dose-dependent increase in the preventive effect in coronary heart disesase patients with an increase in the ­extent of weekly training.