What are the potential benefits of home-based versus centre-based cardiac rehabilitation for patients with heart failure?
The evidence on patient completion suggested a clinically important increase in completion rates in the home-based groups compared to the centre-based groups. For some patients, the burden of travelling to a centre for rehabilitation and/or dislike of exercising in a group setting may be a substantial barrier to participation in centre-based programmes. For these patients, home-based rehabilitation may be a more attractive and achievable option. Similarly, a patient representative expressed his view that the main concern of many younger patients with heart failure is to learn and understand their limits with professional supervision, to enable them to then exercise safely and comfortably alone.