[Clinical and social aspects of vocational rehabilitation of patients after heart valve prosthesis].

Clinical and social factors that determined the effect of occupational rehabilitation were analyzed in 71 patients after prosthetic valve implantation. In addition to objective factors, resuming work depended on a number of subjective ones as well, as the number of working individuals was virtually similar among the preoperative and follow-up patients, while the number of invalids increased, in spite of the fact that functional condition had improved by 1 or 2 functional classes, according to NYHA, in 52.8% of postoperative patients. There were no significant differences in physical working capacity, as evidenced by bicycle ergometry, between working postoperative patients and those who failed to resume working.