The effectiveness of cardiac rehabilitation in non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy patients: A pilot study.

We aimed to investigate the efficacy of cardiac rehabilitation (CR) through parameters of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) and echocardiography in non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients.We retrospectively identified non-ischemic DCM patients through medical records (between October 2011 and October 2018) in rehabilitation outpatient-clinics. Patients were divided into rehabilitation and control groups. Patients in the rehabilitation group eligible for inclusion had CR for 3-6 months. Control group patients were without rehabilitation. We recorded CPET and echocardiography parameters at the baseline and follow-up time-points. For safety evaluation, we investigated all adverse effects during training sessions. We utilized Mann-Whitney U test for between- and Wilcoxon signed-rank test for within-group comparisons.Twenty-five patients (14 in rehabilitation and 11 in control group) were included. In the rehabilitation group, significantly increased peak V˙O/kg, peak V˙O%, peak workload and peak O pulse were observed after completing CR, and echocardiographic parameters including left ventricular ejection fraction and end-systolic volume. Rehabilitation group patients demonstrated better improvement (change from the baseline) in peak V˙O/kg, peak V˙O% and peak workload vs. control. No adverse effects during rehabilitation trainings were observed.For non-ischemic DCM, rehabilitation led to superior cardiopulmonary outcomes vs. no rehabilitation, without adverse effects.