Retrospective analysis of cardiac events during cardiac rehabilitation at Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg during 2014 and 2015.

BACKGROUND: The benefits of cardiac rehabilitation are well accepted. However, there still remains a debate concerning the risk of cardiac events, especially arrhythmias, during exercise training. The goal of the study was to retrospectively analyze events, including arrhythmias, in the cardiac rehabilitation unit of the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg during 2014-2015 and to identify if there was a link between patients stratified as high-risk patients and events.

METHODS: This analysis included each patient that participated in cardiac rehabilitation at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg during 2014 and 2015. Major and minor cardiac events during exercise training in this period were retraced by retrospectively looking at patient files. These events were related to the potential risk of the patients, assessed by the "Risk stratification for cardiac events", edited by the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation.

RESULTS: 628 patients were recruited for cardiac rehabilitation at the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg during 2014 and 2015. They exercised for a combined total of 15065 training hours. There were no major cardiac events during exercise training in this period; the number of minor events was low (n=24; 1 minor event/628 training hours). About two thirds of our patients are considered as low risk patients, one third of the patients were at intermediate or high risk. We found no relationship between events and risk stratification.

CONCLUSION: There were no major cardiac events in our patients and the rate of minor cardiac events was low and not related to risk stratification.