Does the mode of delivery in routine cardiac rehabilitation have an association with cardiovascular risk factor outcomes?

Aims Cardiac rehabilitation is one of the most cost-effective interventions for patients with cardiovascular disease. Worldwide supervised group-based cardiac rehabilitation is the dominant mode of delivery followed by facilitated self-managed (FSM), which is emerging as part of a cardiac rehabilitation menu. Modern research evidence, using trials and well-resourced interventions, suggests FSM is comparable to supervised rehabilitation in its outcomes for patients; however, this is yet to be established using routine clinical practice data. Methods Including 81,626 patients from routine clinical data in the National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation, this observational study investigated whether mode of delivery, supervised or FSM, was associated with similar cardiac rehabilitation outcomes. Hierarchical regression models included patient and service covariates such as age, gender, cardiac rehabilitation duration and programme staff type. Results The results showed 85% of the population received supervised cardiac rehabilitation. The FSM group were significantly older, female and predominantly in lower socioeconomic groups. The results showed that all patients on average benefit from cardiac rehabilitation, independently of mode of delivery, across all risk factors. Additional benefit of 13% and 11.4% increased likelihood of achieving the target state for physical activity and body mass index respectively when using FSM approaches. Conclusion This is the first study to investigate traditional cardiovascular risk factors with cardiac rehabilitation mode of delivery using routine clinical data. Both modes of delivery were associated with comparable statistically significant positive outcomes. Despite having equivalent outcomes, FSM cardiac rehabilitation continues to be underutilised, with less than 20% of patients receiving this mode of delivery in the UK.