Considering a progressive course of cardiovascular disease, often leading to premature death, and difficulty in obtaining long-lasting stabilization of clinic state, it is deeply justified to take preventive interventions completing repairing actions and pharmacotherapy. Addressing various preventive programs to the patients with CVD, we put a special emphasis to simple and low-cost modification of physical activity, which has a beneficial influence on the circulatory system. As it has been proved, protective action of physical activity on the vessels concerns the whole arterial system including the vessels responsible for erectile dysfunction (ED) creation.
The aim of the study: The analysis of the influence of physical activity modification, taking place within frames of a six-month supervised cardiac rehabilitation, on ED intensification in the population with ischemic heart disease (IHD).
Material and methods: The analysis has been conducted on 129 patients with IHD, whose preliminary test IIEF-5 (International Index of Erectile Function-5) showed < or =21 scores, which justified ED diagnosis. The analyzed group consisted of 98 patients with IHD at the mean age of 62.35 +/- 8.88 years, who were subjected to the six-month cardiologic rehabilitation. The testing group comprises 31 patients with IHD at the mean age of 61.71 +/- 7.35, who were not rehabilitated for objective reasons. The patients of both groups filled in an IIEF-5 questionnaire twice, at the interval of six months.
Results: As a result of cardiologic rehabilitation in the analyzed group, a statistically significant increase in scores occurred in the IIEF5 test, from 11.88 +/- 6.2 to 13.69 +/- 7.07, which was not observed in the control group. Moreover, a division of the analyzed group into ED intensity categories (severe, medium-severe, moderate, light) confirmed the occurrence of significant changes of ED intensity for subsequent ED severity categories. For the subsequent ED intensity categories, from the greatest to the lightest, the statistically significant increase of the scores from a sheet IIEF-5: 4.66 +/- 0.98 vs. 5.34 +/- 1.41 (p < 0.01); 9.5 +/- 1.2 vs. 10.9 +/- 1.58 (p < 0.01); 14.67 +/- 1.22 vs. 17.7 +/- 1.80 (p < 0.01) and 19.62 +/- 1.11 vs. 21.85 +/- 1.23 (p < 0.01) has been found. Bearing in mind the dependence of results on the credibility of data from the sheet IIEF-5, the last element was the analysis of 'truthfulness test', which has not shown any statistically significant differences obtained for first and next filling in the questionnaire.
Conclusions: The performed analyses allowed drawing the conclusions. A six-month cardiac rehabilitation cycle led to a significant positive modification of erectile dysfunction intensity. The greatest positive ED modification occurred at the groups of the patients, in whom the erectile dysfunction intensity was the smallest.