“The older patients are 77 per cent less likely to enrol in cardiac rehabilitation programs after a heart attack, even though they would benefit from the programs as much as younger people. We knew this was happening, but we didn’t know why, so we asked them,” said Grace, associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York, a scientist at Toronto General Research Institute and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

The study, “Barriers to Cardiac Rehabilitation: Does Age Make a Difference?” is in the May/June 2009 issue of the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention, published online.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death and disability. Cardiac rehabilitation programs have been shown to reduce death by 25 per cent in heart patients, who are at a greater risk than most people of having another heart problem. However, in the U.S. and Canada, where this study was conducted, only 15 to 30 per cent of cardiac patients take part in cardiac rehabilitation and the rate for older patients is much lower.

Once older patients are enrolled in cardiac rehabilitation, they attend as well as younger patients, said Grace. However, they were less likely to enrol in the programs, which typically involve exercise, education and counselling. The study showed that in many cases it was because older patients had not been referred by their doctors to cardiac rehabilitation. This decision may not have been motivated by age discrimination, Grace says, but perhaps because doctors often hear older patients’ reasons why they don’t think they should go.

“We found that older people were more likely to think the programs wouldn’t help them, or worried that the programs would be tiring or painful, and they wouldn’t be able to do them because they had other health problems,” said Grace. “We need to get the word out to older people and their doctors that these programs are tailored very carefully to their individual needs and abilities.”

Grace led a research team of three York University students – Shannon Gravely-Witte, Shamila Shanmugasegaram and Janette Brual − as well as Neville Suskin, of the London Health Sciences Center and University of Western Ontario, and Dr. Donna Stewart, of the University Health Network and University of Toronto. They studied 698 heart patients over age 65 and 575 younger patients.

“Older patients assume they are supposed to be sick,” said Grace. “But there’s good evidence that people who go to cardiac rehab programs increase both the quantity of life and, perhaps more important to seniors, their quality of life.”

York University is the leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto, Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 50,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as more than 200,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 11 faculties and 26 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.
 

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Media Contact:

Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22101 / wallsj@yorku.ca