The primary goal of rehabilitation is to slow down the progression of coronary heart disease via secondary preventive efforts and to reduce the negative social and psychosomatic sequelae of a myocardial infarction to the unavoidable minimum. Cardiac rehabilitation has developed into an active strategy of secondary prevention, based on sufficient diagnostic evaluation, aiming at the modification of risks factors and including the entire psychosocial field into the long-term therapeutic concept. After myocardial infarction the patient carries, in comparison to the normal population, approximately a tenfold risk to die suddenly or to suffer another myocardial infarction. Following a first infarction, risk factors such as smoking, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension are of increased epidemiologic importance. A lower social class will in itself lead to an increase of the incidence of reinfarction and to a decrease in life expectancy. One of the central goals therefore is to convey the importance of a health-oriented behavior pattern, which is achieved in single and group-therapy sessions as well as with the help of physiotherapy. Controlled physical exercise, however, does not only serve as an educational vehicle, but also has direct effects on cardiovascular physiology, leading to a decrease in heart rate and blood pressure for a given work load and thus to an increase of the angina pectoris threshold. Moreover, controlled physical exercise has a substantial antidepressive effect in the critical phase following acute myocardial infarction, and will lead to increased self-confidence.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)