AIM: To study the effect of health management for the rehabilitation of patients underwent coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), taking the quality of life (QOL), blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat as indicators. METHODS: From August 2004 to August 2005, 368 CABG postoperative patients were divided into health management group and control group at random, and were undergone follow-up studies. They were all volunteered in the evaluation, with the approval of the Medical Ethnics Committee of Tongji University. (1) Control group: patients received traditional rehabilitation and conducted recheck according to prescription of doctors. CABG postoperative patients chose the recheck time and hospital by themselves, patients were initiative while doctors were passive. (2) Health management group: doctors made a good rehabilitation program, including movement therapy, mental nursing, health education, management and intervention of blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat. Community medical unit and doctors were appointed to CABG postoperative patients. Doctors were initiative, and patients were passive or initiative. On admission and one-year postoperation, all the patients were investigated their QOL by filling the MOS 36-item short-form health survey (SF-36), which was related with physiological and mental healthy in 8 aspects, each aspect was scored from 0 to 100 and higher scores indicated higher QOL. Blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat were also measured by trained doctors. RESULTS: There were 342 of 368 subjects involved in the follow-up, including 183 patients in health management group and 159 in control group, follow-up rate was 92.9%. (1) On admission, there were no significant differences in QOL, incidences of abnormal blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat between two groups (p > 0.05). (2) One-year postoperation, the incidences of abnormal blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat were significantly lower in health management group than in control group (9%, 27%; 6%, 17%; 9%, 23%, Chi-2 = 9.285 to 17.332, p < 0.01). The score of QOL was significantly higher in health management group than in control group (physiological function: 80.34 +/- 16.33, 76.19 +/- 15.47; role-physical performance: 55.78 +/- 38.57, 46.18 +/- 40.22; body pain: 82.28 +/- 22.79, 76.10 +/- 21.37; general health: 66.45 +/- 21.03, 52.32 +/- 20.16; vitality: 67.66 +/- 19.51, 61.34 +/- 21.31; social function: 78.43 +/- 25.22, 71.12 +/- 24.29; role emotional performance: 68.07 +/- 33.60, 57.50 +/- 35.75; mental health: 81.26 +/- 12.24, 75.36 +/- 15.29, t = 2.243 to 6.336, p < 0.05 to 0.01). CONCLUSION: Health management can improve CABG postoperative patients' QOL, lower the incidences of abnormal blood pressure, blood sugar and blood fat. Community medical unit is very important in the rehabilitation of patients following CABG.

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