Conclusions Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation is effective at reducing important clinical outcomes in patients with coronary heart disease .
While our analysis was constrained by the quality of included trials and missing information about intervention components , there appears to be little differential effect of variations in exercise intervention , particularly on mortality outcomes .
Background While the clinical benefits of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation are well established , there is extensive variation in the interventions used within these trials .
It is unknown whether variations in individual components of these exercise interventions provide different relative contributions to overall clinical outcomes .
This study aims to systematic ally examine the relationship between individual components of the exercise intervention in cardiac rehabilitation ( such as intensity and frequency ) and clinical outcomes for people with coronary heart disease .
Hospital supervised vs home exercise in cardiac rehabilitation: effects on aerobic fitness, anxiety, and depression.
This study focused on the effects of hospital supervision and type of prescribed home exercise in  cardiac rehabilitation programs  on aerobic fitness , anxiety , and depression .  Men who had a myocardial infa rct ion were r and omly assigned to four exercise programs : The first program consisted of purely hospital-based exercise . The second and third programs combined hospital and home exercise , including either bicycling or walking at home . In the fourth program , patients were encouraged to exercise at home , but were given no specific guidance . Fifty-two patients finished the eight-week exercise program and 35 completed the psychologic question naires . At the end of the eight weeks , there were significant differences in the programs ' effects on aerobic fitness . Purely hospital-supervised exercise and the combination of hospital-supervised bicycling with home walking increased aerobic fitness more than completely unsupervised exercise . Furthermore , there were differences in the programs ' effects on manifest anxiety . The combination of home and hospital bicycling was less beneficial than home walking and hospital bicycling or even completely unsupervised exercise at home . The results indicate that the degree of hospital supervision and the type of prescribed home exercise are important design features which may affect the success of cardiac rehabilitation exercise programs . No effects of the different exercise programs on patients ' depression could be found . In general , a close relationship between aerobic fitness and anxiety or depression could not be demonstrated . Implication s of these findings for the design of cardiac rehabilitation exercise programs are discussed
Conclusions Exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation is effective at reducing important clinical outcomes in patients with coronary heart disease .
While our analysis was constrained by the quality of included trials and missing information about intervention components , there appears to be little differential effect of variations in exercise intervention , particularly on mortality outcomes .
Background While the clinical benefits of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation are well established , there is extensive variation in the interventions used within these trials .
It is unknown whether variations in individual components of these exercise interventions provide different relative contributions to overall clinical outcomes .
This study aims to systematic ally examine the relationship between individual components of the exercise intervention in cardiac rehabilitation ( such as intensity and frequency ) and clinical outcomes for people with coronary heart disease .