Although research indicates that older adults hospitalized with acute decompensated heart failure (HF) have high rates of poor quality of life, delayed recovery, physical frailty, and frequent rehospitalization, well-established interventions to address physical frailty in this population are lacking. Researchers conducted a study to evaluate a transitional, tailored, progressive rehabilitation intervention including four physical function domains (balance, endurance, mobility, strength) that is initiated during, or early after, hospitalization and continued for 36 outpatient sessions among patients with markedly impaired physical function and a frail or prefrail rate of 97%. After adjusting for baseline Short Physical Performance Battery score (range of 0-12, with lower scores indicating more severe physical dysfunction) and other baseline characteristics, the least-squares mean score on the Short Physical Performance Battery at 3 months was 8.3 among patients assigned to the intervention, compared with 6.9 in a standard care group. All-cause, 6-month rehospitalization rates were 1.18 and 1.28 in the intervention and standard care groups, respectively, while all-cause mortality rates were 0.13 and 0.10, respectively.
