ABSTRACT
Cardiac Rehabilitation and secondary prevention programs are a group of therapeutic maneuvers that can reduce the adverse impact of cardiovascular disease, by using the cardiovascular risk factors reduction, through secondary prevention and exercise training therapy programs. This program started in Mexico in 1944, since then, several health institutions are working on a public or private basis, mainly in an isolated way. This article presents data about fourteen cardiac rehabilitation institutions that answered the first national registry of cardiac rehabilitation programs (RENAPREC) in 2007. On this study, we observed that these centers were mainly private; nevertheless, almost all of the referred population was attended in public health institutions. The core-components for an adequate cardiac rehabilitation attention were satisfied by almost all these centers. The patients used to pay, by their own, this kind of medical practice. In our country, only the 0.58% of the population, that needed to be included on a cardiac rehabilitation program, was covered. This phenomena is due, in one hand, to the reduced number of cardiac rehabilitation centers in Mexico, but on the other hand, it happens because the primary physician do not refer all the eligible patients to this kid of programs. RENAPREC can be one first attempt to consolidate all the activities around the inter-institutional cardiac rehabilitation and secondary prevention programs in our country.