Effectiveness and safety of exercise training and rehabilitation in elderly patients after heart valve intervention: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness and safety of exercise rehabilitation in older adults undergoing intervention for heart valve disease.

Method: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Ovid Medline, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang were systematically searched until January 2024. Risk-of-bias assessments were performed using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. A meta-analysis of the following indexes was performed using RevMan 5.4 software.

Results: Nine trials involving 631 patients were ultimately included. Exercise rehabilitation significantly reduced the risk of adverse events, increased the 6-minute walk distance, improved the physical component of quality of life, and shortened the length of postoperative hospitalization. However, exercise rehabilitation did not affect all-cause mortality, left heart ejection fraction, or peak oxygen uptake.

Conclusions: Exercise rehabilitation may enhance exercise capacity, reduce the incidence of adverse events, and shorten the length of postoperative hospitalization in older adults undergoing intervention for heart valve disease.