Cardiac transplant and exercise cardiac rehabilitation

A Review of High-Intensity Interval Training in Heart Transplant Recipients

“…On a group level, the answer appears to be yes, a statement also supported by the American College of Cardiology 20 and in a recent review by Squires, 10 but as for all other patient groups, recipients of HTx are individuals with diverse patient histories, different initial conditions, and different needs. Thus, all patients with HTx should undergo a thorough evaluation before starting a HIIT program, and they should be closely supervised by experienced health care personnel during and after exercise, especially at the beginning of a program.…”

“…Over the last four decades, CR exercise interventions first changed from nonstandardized exercise protocols to more standardized exercise protocols with moderate intensity as the common prescription, 2 and now there is an increasing focus also on recommendations for progression in exercise prescriptions and individually tailored programs. 3 High-intensity interval-based training (HIIT) exercise protocols have been proven to be efficient in an increasing number of research studies over the past decade 1,[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] ; however, HIIT is still not implemented as standard therapy or standard recommendation after HTx in clinical practice. 12 The provided timeline (Table 1) shows novel studies involving exercise after HTx from 1976 to 2023, and all the newer studies involving HIIT (Table 2) point clearly in the same direction: HIIT is a safe and effective exercise method after HTx.…”