Made it to Wednesday 😎
Hope everyone is having a great week so far, and ready to enjoy this chill work vibe from Music Lab as we look at the main subgroups I used during the NICER research project.
I'll try and keep as much geekiness out as possible.
Here we go...
Subgroups & Why They're Used
The first kind of subgroups I used in the NICER study were systolic blood pressure groupings. These were referred to as SB1 for hypotensive patients (blood pressure below 100 at rest), SB2 (normotensive, meaning blood pressures between 100 to 130), and SB3 (hypertensive, blood pressures over 130). Note here that the blood pressure values are systolic (i.e. the number at the top of a blood pressure reading, the first one the doctor tells you when they say "125 on 85", for example).
Those blood pressure groups were applied based on what the patients' resting blood pressure was BEFORE they started the rehabilitation program, and these groups are very important for all the retrospective review data (where I analysed the historical data of all patients who completed the program). The other important subgroups used in the study are shown to the left. The MC Classifications shown were also used in the retrospective data analysis, as well as in the clinical pilot study where I actually tested my new approach to the rehabilitation of a set of patients.
Of course patients who are attending cardiac rehabilitation are there because they have a history of heart issues (e.g. recent heart attack, heart failure or a history of risk factors). And so the CR Classification groups shown above were used as the primary groupings for all the patients who were enrolled into the new program. So when a new patient came into the rehabilitation program, they were first classified based on their CR group, and then their MC group. This gave me a way to group patients together for both their exercise programs and for data analysis. When it came to the actual exercise part, I developed some new tools to guide the prescription of this training, and these are shown here.
The AEPM above was developed as a guide to setting some initial starting points for these seriously ill patients. If you remember from my post on why I got into research (link below to that post, "NICER Study: Background"), you'll know that it was important to have these initial guides in place to help safegaurd patients when they first start. Then I developed the CAP Strategy to the left which helps to set some initial goals for a patient's program at the end, as well as guide the progression of the exercise intensity during the program. This too was developed to allow those prescribing exercise to have a direction to support patients moving forward.
OK, I think that's enough 'geeky' for one night, yes? And I did promise to keep things as simple as I could, so hopefully these subgroups were clear enough to understand. They'll be very important for all the other NICER study discussion. Please let me know if anything is unclear.
Stay awesome guys,
EMH