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 .
Effects of a prescribed supervised exercise program on mortality and cardiovascular morbidity in patients after myocardial infarction. The National Exercise and Heart Disease Project.
This study enrolled 651 men with myocardial infa rct ion in five participating centers in a r and omized 3 year clinical trial of the effects of prescribed supervised exercise .  The subjects , aged to 30 to 64 years , were screened for eligibility 2 to 36 months after their qualifying myocardial infa rct ion . The men in the exercise group pursued intensive exercise in the laboratory for 8 weeks and then in a gymnasium for 34 months . The experience of the exercise group was more favorable than that of the control group in most of the comparisons made . The cumulative 3 year total mortality rate was 7.3 percent for the control group and 4.6 percent for the exercise group ; the 3 year rate for recurrent myocardial infa rct ion was 7.0 and 5.3 percent , respectively . Mortality rates in the two groups did not differ significantly , but the data were consistent with an assumption of substantial benefit from exercise . Adjustment for small differences in baseline variables by multivariate methods did not material ly alter the estimate of effect of exercise . Certain subgroups showed a greater benefit from exercise
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 .