Wales leading uptake of cardiac rehabilitation services, BHF extols

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) Cymru has praised Wales for making ‘significant improvements’ in the number of heart patients accessing vital cardiac rehabilitation.

The BHF found that more than half of patients took part in rehabilitation following a heart attack or procedure - a 17 per cent increase on the previous year.

Ruth Coombs, Head of BHF Cymru maintained: “The figures make Wales a world leader in heart rehabilitation services, but warned there were still around 2,000 heart patients missing out on cardiac rehabilitation. It is hugely encouraging that more patients are accessing cardiac rehabilitation services than ever before, but there is still much more to be done.

“Thousands of heart patients are still missing out on this effective service and are more at risk of suffering a deadly heart attack. There are also delays in patients getting access to care.

“There is variation between services which needs to be ironed out to ensure that every patient has access to cardiac rehabilitation which can reduce their risk of suffering another attack.”

The charity recommends that heart attack and angioplasty patients start cardiac rehabilitation within 33 days, but just half of programmes are meeting this target.

Prof Patrick Dohery, director of the National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation at University of York commented: “The good news is that Wales now leads the world in uptake to cardiac rehabilitation and prevention for patients following a cardiac event or procedure, with around 60 per cent of patients accessing services.”

However, he added: “The bad news is that unfortunately four in ten patients are still not accessing these services and those that do attend may receive inadequate care with nearly half of the programmes failing to meet the minimum standards.”