Revista de informática médica y de salud

Effect of Exercise Program on Health Status of Heart Failure Patients: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

Younus Khudhur, Yousif Mohammed and Nazar Ali

Background: Heart failure is a serious medical condition, where the heart is unable to push an adequate amount of blood compared to the amount needed by the body.

Methods: A quasi-experimental design was carried out throughout the present study with application of pre-posttests approach for the study and control groups. A non-probability, purposive sample was selected which consisted of (400) samples, they were divided into two groups, first group of (200) heart failure patients were exposed to the exercise educational program considered as a study group, and second group of (200) patients were not exposed to the exercise educational program and considered as control group. The extent of samples knowledge about the disease was tested at both the pre and post education stages. A structured teaching program for imparting knowledge regarding the benefit of exercise for the health status of heart failure patients was developed by the authors. The results of the study were elicited based on two statistical approaches, first, descriptive statistics and the second is an inferential statistical analysis.

Results: A total of 400 heart failure patients completed a pre and post-test. Respect to subjects of studied sociodemographical characteristics of the samples, it shows that (32%) of the study group were (75-79) years old while (32%) of the control group were at age (70-74) years old, (52.5) of the study group were male while (50%) of the control group were male. The results show that study group main domains along (Pre-Post) periods were highly significant at p<0.05. An improvement in patients ’ knowledge has been shown immediately after program implementation. Moreover, the results show an improvement in patients’ exercises status immediately after the implementation of the educational program.
Conclusion: The implementing an education program about the exercise practice in Erbil city had increased heart failure patients knowledge, in addition, the program improved their exercise status.