BACKGROUND: The effect of an early short-term home-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program on ventricular function in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients is not yet clear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of our CR program on the improvement of myocardial function using three-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (3D-STE) in AMI patients. METHODS: Fifty-two AMI patients were randomly assigned to 2 groups after discharge: the rehabilitation group, which participated in an early, home-based CR program, and the control group, which received only usual care. All subjects in both groups underwent 3D-STE examinations of the left ventricle within 48 hours of percutaneous coronary intervention and again 4 weeks after discharge. Global longitudinal strain (GLS), global radial strain (GRS), global area strain (GAS), global circumferential strain (GCS), left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), and segmental strains were computed. The CR program was initially conducted with supervised inpatient training, followed by an unsupervised home-based training program during a 4-week follow-up. RESULTS: We obtained segmental strains from 832 segments, of which 319 were defined as interventional segments, 179 as ischemic segments, and the remaining segments as normal segments. At the 4-week follow-up, when controlling for baseline values, the rehabilitation group showed significant improvements in GLS, GRS, GCS, GAS, LVEF, and in all of the segmental strains of the 3 subgroups compared with the control group (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that an early, home-based CR program can greatly improve the ventricular function of AMI patients in a short period of time.

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