ABSTRACT
Cardiac, or more broadly cardiovascular (CV), disease provides one of the biggest challenges to exercise and health professionals in the United Kingdom and worldwide. This is primarily due to the scale of the problem as well as the diversity and complexity of the diseases. It is well known that CV diseases are the most common pathology in ‘Western’ societies accounting for 238,000 deaths in 2002 in the United Kingdom. About 50% of these deaths were due to coronary heart disease (British Heart Foundation, 2004). CV diseases constitute a huge medical burden to the NHS as most diseases are progressive and impose a life-long burden of intervention and treatment that require the investment of time, labour, drug therapy and other broader cost implications.
