ABSTRACT. The purpose of this article is to gain a deeper understanding of the role of sympathetic overactivation in heart failure, the use of CPET for the functional evaluation of cardiac patients in both clinical and research settings, the routine postoperative physiotherapy management of patients undergoing uncomplicated open-heart surgery, and the importance of pre-training cardiovascular risk assessment. My paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence on changes in CPET parameters induced by recent coronary and valvular surgery, the role of early mobilization of postoperative surgical patients, the effect of short-term supervised inpatient physiotherapy exercise upon cardiac autonomic nervous function, the impact of exercise programs for PAD patients on mortality or incidence of revascularization and amputations, and the postoperative recovery of the cardiac surgery patient. pp. 177–182

Keywords: physiotherapy, management, mobilization, cardiac, surgery, patient