Psychologically-enhanced cardiac rehabilitation for psychological and functional improvement in patients with cardiovascular disease: a systematic review with meta-analysis and future research directions

To systematically review the effectiveness of psychologically-enhanced cardiac rehabilitation (CR) in improving psychological and functional outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease.

A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science, up to January 31, 2024.

Two reviewers independently identified randomized clinical trials that evaluated the effectiveness of psychologically-enhanced CR in improving psychological and functional outcomes in patients with cardiovascular disease. The search yielded 1848 results. Finally, data from 14 studies (1531 participants) were included in the review.

Information regarding cardiac rehabilitation phase, duration of the intervention, group characteristics, measured outcomes, and the conclusions drawn by the authors was extracted. The Revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for Randomized Trials was used to evaluate the methodological quality.

Pooled results indicate that psychologically-enhanced CR is more effective than specific cardiac training alone in maintaining lower resting blood pressure, with a mean difference of -3.09 (95% CI: -5.18 to -1.00). Furthermore, psychologically-enhanced CR shows superiority in improving patients' quality of life compared to specific cardiac training alone, with a standardized mean difference of 0.15 (95% CI: 0.01 to 0.31). Analyses of depression and anxiety level, exercise tolerance, and blood lipid profile did not show significant differences between the two treatment conditions.

Psychologically-enhanced CR shows a positive effect on reducing resting blood pressure and improving the quality of life. However, the supportive methods were of limited effectiveness in addressing the psychological aspects of health.

PROSPERO CRD42022304063.