Influence of dietitian presence on outpatient cardiac rehabilitation nutrition services

To describe variations in nutrition services offered in a nationally representative sample of out-patient cardiac rehabilitation programs by presence of a registered dietitian (RD), a survey was conducted of 250 randomly selected centers from 1,111 US outpatient cardiac rehabilitation centers in the 1998/1999 Cardiac Rehabilitation Directory of the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation. A total of 190 of the 250 surveys (76%) were returned. Nutrition services offered by programs polled included distribution of nutrition pamphlets, one-on-one nutrition counseling, group nutrition classes, guest lectures on nutrition, and cooking demonstrations. Cardiac rehabilitation programs with an RD offered significantly more nutrition services on average (4.2±1.2) than programs without an RD (3.5±1.1, P=.01). Programs with RDs were more likely to offer one-on-one nutrition counseling than programs without them (98% and 80% respectively, P