The Effect of Cardio, Aerobic and Concurrent Rehabilitation on Hemodynamic and Biomechanical Indicators in Older Men With Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Background and Aims Nowadays, due to technological advances and sedentary or inactive lifestyle, non-communicable diseases have caused many health problems such as cardiovascular diseases. This study aims to examine the effect of two methods of aerobic training and concurrent training for cardiac rehabilitation on selected hemodynamic and biomechanical factors in older men with coronary artery disease.Methods This is a quasi-experimental causal-comparative study using the pre-test/post-test design. Participants were 24 older men with coronary artery disease, randomly divided into three groups of aerobic training, concurrent training, and control. They first underwent cardiac assessment using the echo Doppler device as well as sports performance test. Then, they were referred to the biomechanics laboratory of the Physical Medicine Center to start cardiac rehabilitation training. After 8 weeks of training, they underwent post-test assessments. The mean and standard deviation were used to describe the data. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to check the normality of data distribution and the Levene’s test was used to determine the homogeneity of variances. The paired t-test was used to assess between-group differences and independent t-test was used for assessing differences between pretest and post-test scores of the groups. The significance level was set at 0.05.Results Significant improvement was reported in functional capacity, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), and resting heart rate after both aerobic and concurrent training methods (P0.05). The improvements were more in the concurrent training group.Conclusion Both cardiac rehabilitation methods (aerobic and concurrent training) can improve functional capacity, LVEF, and resting heart rate of older mean with coronary artery disease, where concurrent training is more effective.

Keywords

• exercise
• cardiac rehabilitation
• biomechanics of cardiac function
• coronary artery disease