Using social support interventions to help people with heart disease

Despite the relatively large volume of included studies, this analysis indicates that the impact of social network or social support interventions for people with heart disease, as compared with usual care without social support (ie, secondary prevention alone or with cardiac rehabilitation), remains uncertain.

The review found weak evidence to suggest that social network or social support interventions may improve health-related quality of life and reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure. There may be a reduction in all-cause and cardiovascular-related mortality at >12 months follow-up, but the certainty of evidence was low.

There was a lack of evidence relating to mortality (all-cause or cardiovascular-related at ≤12 months), morbidity (hospital admissions, rates of myocardial infarction or revascularisation) and adverse events.