Heart Rehabilitation

As you manage a heart condition or recover after cardiac surgery, count on Owensboro Health rehabilitation professionals to help you gain strength and improve your health.

Do I Need Heart Rehabilitation?

Heart, or cardiac, rehabilitation benefits you following a condition or procedure such as:

• Angina (chest pain)
• Heart Attack
• Heart Failure
• Angioplasty and Stenting
• Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery (CABG)
• Heart Transplant
• Valve Surgery

Cardiac rehabilitation and efforts targeted at exercise, lipid management, hypertension control, and smoking cessation can reduce death from cardiovascular disease.

What Cardiac Rehab Involves

Your doctor will refer you to Owensboro Health’s Heart Rehabilitation program. If you stayed in the hospital for heart care, your program will begin a few weeks after you return home.

You’ll work in a group setting with a rehabilitation team that includes doctors, health educators, clinical exercise physiologists, dietitians, and nurses. Team members meet you and other patients three times a week for up to 36 sessions, depending on your needs.

You’ll exercise under the supervision of professionals who monitor your heart rhythm, heart rate and blood pressure and track your progress. They also teach you how to monitor your heart rate so you can exercise safely on your own.

Building a Healthy Lifestyle

Your heart rehabilitation program includes:

• A personalized exercise plan
• Education about coping with your heart condition, reducing stress and developing healthy habits
• Nutrition counseling to help you create a heart-healthy diet and manage your weight

Rehabilitation Goals

The goals of cardiac rehabilitation are to improve functional capacity, alleviate or lessen activity-related symptoms, reduce disability, and identify and modify coronary risk factors in an attempt to reduce further events.

When you commit to your cardiac rehabilitation program, you may:

• Live longer
• Reduce your risk of a heart attack
• Control symptoms such as chest pain or shortness of breath
• Stop or reverse damage to blood vessels in your heart
• Improve your stamina and energy level, so you can perform daily activities more easily

Cardiac Rehabilitation Services

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Program includes services such as:

• Counseling - Helps the patient understand and manage the disease process
• Emotional support
• Guidance to enable the patient to return to work when possible
• Helping the patient modify risk factors such as:
  • Diabetes
  • High blood pressure
  • High cholesterol
  • Obesity - Evidence suggests that improving the plasma lipid and lipoprotein profile with diet, exercise and drug therapy benefits patients.
  • Physical inactivity
  • Smoking - Those who quit smoking significantly reduce their risks of another heart attack, sudden death, stroke and total mortality compared with those who continue to smoke.
• Monitored exercise program - Usually three sessions per week for a total of 36 sessions

Our Team

The Cardiac Rehabilitation Department is staffed with Registered Nurses who maintain competency in Basic Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, EKG monitoring and ongoing education and updates in cardiovascular medicine and exercise therapies. The department is equipped with a variety of exercise equipment to meet all of our patient's individual needs.

Lifetime Maintenance

After completing cardiac rehabilitation, you’ll get help developing a long-term exercise routine that keeps you as healthy as possible. As you continue to care for the health of your heart, we encourage find a fitness center near you that can help you keep your heart healthy.