Effectiveness of an Early, Tailored, Physical Activity Intervention in ELderly Patients With Myocardial INfarction: the PIpELINe Randomized Clinical Trial

Elderly patients presenting with myocardial infarction (MI) are the highest risk population with the worst prognosis. No trial has ever been designed to optimize their outcome through a systematic improvement of their physical performance. Cardiac rehabilitation demonstrated to improve prognosis of patients after MI. However, real-life data shows that older patients are not referred to rehabilitation centers or they have low rate of attendance because of the high number of rehabilitation sessions and of logistic problems. So, data about effectiveness of rehabilitation programs in older MI patients is lacking. The "Physical Activity Intervention for Elderly Patients with Reduced Physical Performance after acute coronary syndrome (HULK)" pilot study (NCT03021044) enrolled older MI patients and it demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of an early, tailored and low-cost physical activity intervention in terms of physical performance assessed by Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) score, that is strongly related to prognosis. The HULK study was focused on exercise training and not powered for hard endpoints. If a multi-domain lifestyle intervention in an adequately powered study may further improve prognosis is unknown. Thus, the investigator's hypothesis for the PIpELINe trial is that an early, tailored and low-cost multi-domain lifestyle intervention may improve prognosis of older MI patients compared to health education alone. The primary outcome is a composite of 1-year cardiovascular death and hospital readmission for cardiovascular cause.