A recent study has revealed that elderly people with heart troubles, who stick to cardiac rehabilitation sessions and go regularly, end up boosting their chances of survival manifolds as compared to those who do not bother with them, but fewer than 1 in 5 eligible patients actually end up going for the session.

For the sake of study, researchers analyzed medical records of over 30,000 Medicare patients from the age groups of 65 and above who had been a part of at least one heart rehabilitation session from 2000 to 2005. The conclusion where then drawn which stressed that the more sessions a patient attends, the better.

"We were not surprised that patients who attended more rehabilitation had better outcomes. We need to encourage physicians to recommend cardiac rehabilitation to eligible patients, and we need to encourage those patients to attend and stay with it", said lead author Bradley G. Hammill.

It was discovered that patients who attended all 36 sessions (the number Medicare pays for), had cut their risk of a heart attack by 12% and also had a 14% lower risk of dying as compared to patients who attended 24 sessions.

The findings have been detailed in the December 22 issue of the Circulation.