Cardiac Rehab Struggling To Keep Up With Heart Disease Worldwide

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 14, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Most people with heart disease around the world don’t have access to rehab programs that could extend their lives, a new study says.

Cardiac rehabilitation programs are designed to help people recover from a heart attack or manage their heart disease, through a regimen of exercise, education and stress reduction.

These programs are known to reduce death by more than 25% and hospitalization by almost 20% among heart patients, researchers said.

However, there are nowhere near enough programs available worldwide to help everyone with heart disease, researchers reported recently in the journal PLOS One.

“An increasing number of people live with chronic cardiac disease with the highest levels in low- and middle-income countries, where about 80% of cardiovascular deaths occur globally,” lead researcher Gabriela Lima de Melo Ghisi, an adjunct professor with the University of Toronto, said in a news release. “This not only increases economic pressures on these countries, but places further burdens on their health-care systems.”

For the new study, researchers performed what they say is the first global assessment of cardiac rehabilitation programs following the COVID pandemic. The team focused on hybrid or alternative programs that offer home-based telehealth rehab sessions.

The team identified close to 7,000 such cardiac rehab programs in 90 countries, but these programs were largely centered in advanced countries:

• The United States has 2,687 cardiac rehab programs for 1.1 million cases of heart disease annually.

• Canada has 380 programs for 72,849 cases.

• Japan has 678 programs for 292,531 cases.

• Germany has 155 programs for 362,984 cases.

By comparison, there were no programs in either Afghanistan (34,027 cases of heart disease) or Ethiopia (28,903 cases) and only 23 programs in Malawi (3,872 cases).

“Multiple studies have already shown that cardiac rehabilitation programs work, playing an outsized role in reducing mortality, hospital readmissions and improving quality of life,” researcher Rachel Carson, a graduate student at York University in Canada, said in a news release. “Despite that, these programs are under-utilized.”

The major roadblock is a lack of staffing and funding for these programs, especially for programs that are trying to expand access by offering telehealth rehab, researchers said.

About 1,233 alternative or hybrid cardiac programs were reported in 40 countries, but only 286 said they were receiving funding from either government agencies or insurance companies, results show.

“Overall, approximately one-quarter of programs reported reimbursement for hybrid/alternative models, available in roughly one-third of countries with cardiac rehabilitation globally,” researchers wrote in their study.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on cardiac rehabilitation.

SOURCES: York University, news release, Oct. 9, 2026; PLOS One, Oct. 9, 2026