Can ‘Super Rehab’ turn the tide on a patient’s heart disease? A feasibility study
Heart disease affects many people in the UK and is a leading cause of early death. Current treatments focus on medications and operations to overcome the ‘furring-up’ of people’s heart blood vessels.
‘Super Rehab’ is a different approach to treating patients who have heart disease with ‘metabolic syndrome’, which includes diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.
Super Rehab involves 10 weeks of one-to-one supervised intensive exercise sessions alongside changes to diet. After this intensive phase, supervision is reduced little-by-little up to 12-months to help patients become self-sufficient.
Project aims
We will assess whether it’s possible to introduce this new Super Rehab intensive lifestyle programme into the care of patients who have heart disease with metabolic syndrome.
We will check whether patients like the programme and see if their lifestyle changes are kept up as the level of supervision is reduced. We’ll collect patients’ views and tests of their health, including heart health, will be taken at the beginning, middle and end of the study.
What we hope to achieve
The findings from this smaller (feasibility) study will help us to decide if we should carry out a larger multi-hospital trial. A larger trial would give stronger evidence of whether Super Rehab improves the furring up of people’s blood vessels and heart health.
This larger study would help the NHS to decide whether Super Rehab should be offered to patients across the country.
Lead collaborators
- Dr Jonathan Rodrigues, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
ARC West Staff
Partners on this project
Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
The Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust provides acute treatment and care for a catchment population of around 500,000 people in Bath, and the surrounding towns and villages in North East Somerset and Western Wiltshire.
University of Bath
The University of Bath is one of the UK's leading universities with an international reputation for quality research and teaching. Its mission is to deliver world class research and teaching, educating its graduates to become future leaders and innovators, and benefiting the wider population through our research, enterprise and influence.
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is internationally renowned and one of the very best in the UK, due to its outstanding teaching and research, its superb facilities and highly talented students and staff. Its students thrive in a rich academic environment which is informed by world-leading research. It hosts the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research.