Exercise for postcoronary patients: an assessment of infrequent supervision.

Forty-nine patients who had been attending a regular weekly physician-supervised exercise program for a year or more following a myocardial infarction were transferred to an experimental regimen based on a personal activity prescription, reinforced by attendance at the physician-supervised exercise class once every 8 weeks. Data were compared with the responses of 31 patients who continued to attend the standard rehabilitation program. Ten of the 49 experimental patients showed a deterioration of cardiorespiratory fitness over the ensuing year. Of the remaining 39, 23 who had already reached a training plateau sustained their condition, while 16 showed small continuing gains of aerobic power. The infrequently supervised program proved safe, but its therapeutic effectiveness is doubtful; relative to the patients receiving standard treatment, gains of aerobic power were small, and there was some deterioration of the exercise electrocardiogram over the year of study.