Advantages and concerns of aquatic exercise for cardiovascular rehabilitation patients

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) lead the world in causes of death (46,54). After a cardiovascular health event, individuals are encouraged to attend cardiovascular rehabilitation (CR). CR is an important, monitored and supervised aerobic and strength training exercise to improve quality of life, knowledge, physiological function, and functional capacity (9,15,29,32,46,51,52,53,54,56,58,59,64). Consistent, planned exercise, especially aerobic exercise, can help improve and protect the heart from future cardiovascular events (14,17,19,25,26,27,34,35,40,42,46,49,50,52,56,58,62,64,67). Aquatic exercise is popular for all ages, healthy individuals, individuals with a disability, individuals with a diagnosed disease, individuals with special needs, and individuals in physical therapy (4,8,10,14,26,32,34,37,43,48,53,56,58,59,64,66). A huge variety of aerobic and strength exercises can be performed in water (4,20,30,32,66). For stable and low-risk heart patients, aquatic environment research has proven to provide more positives than negatives for cardiovascular health (10,14,40,42,53,64,66). Stable CR patients could maintain or slightly increase cardiovascular health benefits such as increase exercise tolerance (61,64), lower resting heart rate (HR) (8,14), and increased exercise oxygen consumption (VO2) (8,14,40,61).