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The Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Program at PRMC has been treating heart patients since 1986, and all the while defining and refining the rehabilitative care standard on the Delmarva Peninsula.  In fact, they’ve experienced over 1,000,000 patient encounters in those 32 years.

What they are doing, and doing well, has not escaped the attention of a national audience.  The program, under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Wieland and Pam Caldwell, along with Rebecca Toth, Clinical Exercise Physiologist, recently contributed examples of actual patient case studies that became part of the official statement from the American Associations of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation (AACPR) Progression of Exercise Training in Early Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation.  The progression of exercise is key to improving cardiac and respiratory fitness, which is essential after a cardiac event.

This case study clearly demonstrates the quality programming in Cardiac Rehabilitation, which safely and effectively advances patients through exercise training to achieve the clinical benefits of cardiorespiratory fitness, and how this serves as a key element in secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease adverse outcomes.  In other words, how the great things the Cardiovascular Rehabilitation  team does to reduces mortality for local cardiovascular patients-those patients having had a heart attack, stent placed, cardiac bypass surgery, valve intervention or patients with heart failure and angina.

The outstanding clinical team in Cardiac Rehabilitation includes nurses, exercise physiologists and respiratory therapists who individualize the exercise training for patients, while implementing strategies to ensure they are improving and progressing throughout the exercise program.  The goal, as the statement proves they are achieving, is to help patients reach their optimal level of wellbeing, and to minimize any adverse complications.