Why are women missing from outpatient cardiac rehabilitation programs? A review of multilevel factors affecting referral, enrollment, and completion.

Objectives: The objectives of this paper are to (1) systematically review the evidence for patient, provider, and programmatic factors that may influence women's referral to, enrollment in, and completion of outpatient cardiac rehabilitation and (2) make empirically based recommendations for future women's health research.

Methods: Using a defined inclusion/exclusion criteria, this review involved a systematic review and description analysis of the published peer-review literature.

Results: The review yielded 23 studies described in 25 publications.