Cardiorespiratory training after stroke or mini-stroke

20 August 2025

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Background

Each year, in the United Kingdom around 150,000 people experience a stroke, which is when the blood stops flowing to a part of the brain.

Strokes can have a profound impact on individuals and their families. Often, they can lead to long-term problems including difficulties with thinking, communicating and moving. People who have experienced a stroke or a transient ischaemic attack (TIA, or “mini-stroke”) are also at higher risk of having another stroke or heart-related event.

People who have cardiorespiratory training after their stroke often experience improvement in their cardiorespiratory fitness and disability, so this type of therapy is recommended in both UK and international stroke guidelines. However, there is evidence that even though it’s widely recommended, cardiorespiratory training is rarely offered to people after they’ve had a stroke or TIA.

This project aims to assess:

what services are currently being offered in the UK
physiotherapists’ and exercise professionals’ beliefs about the benefits and risks of cardiorespiratory training
barriers to providing this training
potential future service models

Approach

The project has two phases:

In the first phase we will survey physiotherapists and exercise professionals who currently work in stroke or cardiac rehabilitation in the UK. The online survey will be delivered by Thiscovery, a secure online, research platform and will help us to understand more about the services that currently exist, what they look like, and the barriers to implementing cardiorespiratory training after stroke and TIA.
The second phase of the research will involve interviews with exercise professionals and physiotherapists to get a deeper understanding of these same points and to explore some of the survey findings.

Project team