BACKGROUND: Currently, exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) has been receiving increasing interest for its potentially beneficial effects on the health related quality of life (HRQoL) and outcomes of patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of exercise-based CR on patients after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) and percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). METHODS: We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science from inception to 1 December 2023 for relevant studies that evaluated the effect of exercise-based CR on patients after CABG and PCI. Our primary outcomes included mortality, complications, hospital admissions, and HRQoL between patients receiving exercise-based CR and usual care. All statistical analyses were performed using the standard statistical procedures provided in Review Manager 5.2 and Stata 12.0. RESULTS: We finally indicated and included 25 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 4106 participants for the present analysis. Our pooled results indicated that, compared to usual care, exercise-based CR did not increase the all-cause (relative risk, RR: 0.84
95% confidence interval, CI: 0.54-1.31) and cardiovascular (RR: 0.98
95% CI: 0.38-2.54) mortality for patients after coronary artery operation. Similarly, exercise-based CR had an equal effect on coronary artery complications for patients after coronary artery surgery, including CABG (RR: 0.60
95% CI: 0.32 ‒ 1.15) and PCI (RR: 0.92
95% CI: 0.55-1.54). It was indicated that exercise-based CR significantly reduced the incidence of myocardial infarction (MI) by half with an RR of 0.50 (95% CI: 0.28-0.90). In addition, exercise-based CR also significantly reduced all-cause hospital admissions with an RR of 0.74 (95% CI: 0.62-0.88). Compared to usual care, exercise-based CR obviously improved HRQoL of patients after coronary artery operation evaluated with SF-36 summary scores (standardized mean difference, SMD: 0.24
95% CI: 0.11-0.38) and SF-36 8 domains (SMD: 0.35
95% CI: 0.24-0.46). CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis indicated that exercise-based CR had a significant effect on the improvement of HRQoL in patients after coronary artery surgeries without increasing mortality or the incidence of re-intervention with operations.