Prehabilitation in patients awaiting elective coronary artery bypass graft surgery - effects on functional capacity and quality of life: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the impact of an exercise-based prehabilitation (EBPrehab) program on pre- and postoperative exercise capacity, functional capacity (FC) and quality of life (QoL) in patients awaiting elective coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG).

DESIGN

A two-group randomized controlled trail.

SETTING

Ambulatory prehabilitation.

SUBJECTS

Overall 230 preoperative elective CABG-surgery patients were randomly assigned to an intervention (IG,  = 88;  = 27 withdrew after randomization) or control group (CG,  = 115).

INTERVENTION

IG: two-week EBPrehab including supervised aerobic exercise. CG: usual care.

MAIN MEASURES

At baseline (T1), one day before surgery (T2), at the beginning (T3) and at the end of cardiac rehabilitation (T4) the following measurements were performed: cardiopulmonary exercise test, six-minute walk test (6MWT), Timed-Up-and-Go Test (TUG) and QoL (MacNew questionnaire).

RESULTS

A total of 171 patients (IG,  = 81; CG,  = 90) completed the study. During EBPrehab no complications occurred. Preoperatively FC (6MWT: 443.0 ± 80.1 m to 493.5 ± 75.5 m,  = 0.003; TUG: 6.9 ± 2.0 s to 6.1 ± 1.8 s,  = 0.018) and QoL (IG: 5.1 ± 0.9 to 5.4 ± 0.9,  < 0.001) improved significantly more in IG compared to CG. Similar effects were observed postoperatively in FC (6MWD: Δ-64.7 m, p0.013; Δ+47.2 m, p0.001; TUG: Δ+1.4 s, p0.003).

CONCLUSIONS

A short-term EBPrehab is effective to improve perioperative FC and preoperative QoL in patients with stable coronary artery disease awaiting CABG-surgery.ID: NCT04111744 (www.ClinicalTrials.gov; ).