The CaReMATCH project
Published: 17 August 2022
A new study involving MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit's Rod Taylor and Grace Dibben will bring together an international group of researchers to undertake an individual participant data meta-analysis of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation for people with coronary heart disease
Coronary heart disease is a leading cause of health problems, (costly) hospital admission and reduced quality of life.
Several studies have shown that regular exercise in such patients has multiple benefits. Therefore, exercise training is routinely recommended for the treatment of patients with coronary heart disease.
One size fits all?
Although there is good evidence for exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation at group-level, it is unclear how the impact for individual patients differs based on characteristics (e.g., age, sex, body characteristics, race) and nature of the exercise programme (e.g., duration, intensity). Furthermore, the uptake of rehabilitation programmes traditionally delivered in a hospital setting is currently low. Better information on alternative models of exercise delivery (e.g., home-based, digital platforms) is urgently needed.
Aim
The CaReMATCH project – led by MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit's Rod Taylor, and also involving the unit's Grace Dibben – brings together an international group of researchers to undertake an individual participant data meta-analysis of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation for people with coronary heart disease. This will involve reconstructing the patient results from previous studies and conducting de novo statistical analyses.
Future
This specific project will inform the better targeting of exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation to individual patients (‘personalised medicine’) and opportunities to deliver alternative models of exercise for people with coronary heart disease rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Importantly, CaReMATCH allows us to build the collaboration between academic groups with world-leading expertise in exercise training for heart disease together with clinical trial/evidence synthesis methods based at the University of Glasgow and Radboud University, but also University of Liverpool. We anticipate that this academic collaboration will lay the foundation for a future programme of research that can inform major clinical practice and policy issues regarding exercise training in heart disease that will attract major future research grant funding and high impact.
First published: 17 August 2022