Effects of Cardiac Rehabilitation on Cognitive Impairments in Patients With Cardiovascular Diseases: A Systematic Review Publisher Pubmed



Dabbaghipour N¹ ; Javaherian M¹ ; Moghadam BA¹ Show Affiliations
Source: International Journal of Neuroscience Published:2021

Abstract

Background: One of the most common problems associated with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is cognitive impairments (CIs) leading to reduced quality of life and treatment adherence in patients. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the effects of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) on cognitive function in CVD patients. Material and method: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Ovid MEDLINE databases were searched for identification the relevant studies without language restriction. We included the studies published from root to August 2019, evaluating the effects of CR on at least one type of cognitive functions through valid neuropsychological tests. Finally, nine studies with different study designs were entered in this systematic review. The full texts of these studies were critically appraised with various quality assessment tools. Result: Patients were evaluated by different cognitive domains including global cognition, attention, executive function, memory and language prior to and following CR program among included studies. Most of the included studies reported significant cognitive improvement of the attention/executive function and memory domains. Two studies showed statistically significant improvement in global cognition using Modified Mini-Mental State (3MS) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) tools. Similar effects were not found in language domain. Conclusion: It seems that cognitive impairments in CVD patients can be improved with CR program. Because this review is limited by low number of included studies, and there were various study designs without control groups, the results should be generalized cautiously. Further studies are recommended. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.