Effects of exercise cardiac rehabilitation on blood pressure post myocardial infarction patients

Supervised exercise cardiac rehabilitation programs have been suggested to all patients specially post myocardial infarct (MI) for many years. However, limited information is available on the usefulness of exercise rehabilitation programs in chronic myocardial infarct (MI). The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of supervised exercise training on MI patients by measuring both physical and physiological factors. This was a semi-experimental randomized study, including seventy two (35 case, 37 control) post myocardial infarction patients aged 40 to 67 years randomly selected with myocardial infarction based on WHO criteria who were referred to cardiac rehabilitation unit of Isfahan Shahid-Chamran cardiovascular research center. After initial measurements of functional capacity, diastolic and systolic blood pressure in both resting and exercise and measurements of physical, patients were randomized to either a training group (n =35) or a control group (n =37). The training group had supervised aerobic training program three a week with 60–70% of the maximal heart rate reserve for two months. After the training program was completed, all measurements were repeated in both groups. Data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures. Patients in exercise group have shown statistically significant improvement in resting HR (p≤0.001), resting SBP (p≤0.01), DBP (p≤0.01), SBP peak (p≤0.001), HR peak (p≤0.001) and exercise capacity (p≤0.001). Also, Significant improvement was found between groups in the resting HR (81.27±7.75 bpm vs. 74.17±10.11 bpm, p≤0.001), resting SBP (125.92±9.30 mmHg vs. 123.54±6.82 mmHg, p≤0.01), resting DBP (79.73±5.30 mmHg vs. 78.80±4.34 mmHg, p ≥ 0.05), SBP peak (150.22±7.12 mmHg vs. 133.54±6.82 mmHg, p≤0.001), DBP peak (82.59±6.19 mmHg vs. 84.80±4.34 mmHg, p ≥ 0.05), HR peak (132.51±3.06 bpm vs. 142.00±3.14 bpm, p≤0.001), and exercise capacity (8.49±1.18 METs vs. 9.42±1.19 METs, p≤0.01). The results from the study showed that a 2-month exercise rehabilitation program in post-MI patients is useful for improving both blood pressure and exercise capacity and should be encouraged more widely.