Cardiac Rehabilitation

The Hux Cardiovascular Center emphasizes cardiac rehabilitation. Our goal is to help patients resume their regular activities following a heart attack. Cardiac rehabilitation begins during a patient's stay. Nurse educators work closely with patients and their families, teaching them how heart disease develops and outlining individual risk factors. This personalized care continues after discharge in an outpatient setting with a monitored exercise and maintenance program.

Our rehabilitation program has three phases:

Phase 1: An inpatient nurse assesses the patient and presents a brief outline of a graded activity program, which is implemented and followed until discharge from the hospital. Patients and family members are given information concerning cardiovascular disease, risk factors, diet, medication and guidelines for home activities. The patient is given a walking exercise program upon being released from the hospital and is evaluated for participation in the outpatient program.

Outpatient Program

Phase 2: Outpatient rehabilitation will continue the principles of exercise and lifestyle modification through an individual program designed by the cardiologist/physician and the rehabilitation staff. The patient performs a multistage stress test on a bicycle, arm egometer, or treadmill to determine an exercise prescription. After the initial stress test other tests are scheduled at specific intervals to evaluate progress and revise the prescription.

For the first 6 weeks, the patient comes to the clinic three times a week. Once progress is made, the routine is adjusted to exercising both at home and in the clinic over 12 weeks. Eventually, the patient will exercise at home with 6 month and yearly followups.

The outpatient program also offers classes in diet, medication, smoking cessation, relaxation and stress management for patients and family members.

Phase 3: This is a supervised maintenance program that allows patients to continue exercising at the Clinic. It provides group support and allows for maintenance of a person's aerobic exercise.

Benefits of Cardiac Rehabilitation

• Modification of other risk factors
• Improved psychological well-being
• An understanding of one's abilities and limitations
• Substantial improvements in the patient's cardiovascular system, including:
  • Increased work capacity and exercise tolerance
  • Decreased heart rate during exercise and at rest
  • Decreased blood pressure during exercise and at rest
  • Decreased myocardial oxygen consumption
  • Improvement in symptoms
  • Improvement in blood lipid levels

Union Hospital Fitness Center