Objective To investigate the status quo and influencing factors of participation in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) in the elderly patients with coronary heart disease. Methods A total of 246 elderly patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) were selected as the research subjects, who were referred to the CR center from the outpatient and inpatient departments of Qionghai Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine from June 2019 to June 2021. Their participation rate in CR activities was counted according to the sign-in data. SPSS statistics 19.0 was used for data analysis. According to the data type, t-test orχ² test was used for comparison between groups. Logistic regression model was used to analyze the influencing factors of CR participation in the elderly CHD patients. Results Among the 246 elderly CHD patients, 42 (17.07%) had high CR participation, and 204 (82.93%) had poor CR participation. Of 246 questionnaires distributed, 233 were recovered with a recovery rate of 94.72%, including 41 (17.60%) with high participation and 192 (82.40%) with poor participation. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that married status (OR=0.598,95%CI 0.385-0.927), junior college or above (OR=0.635,95%CI 0.505-0.799), understanding of cardiac rehabilitation (OR=0.641,95%CI 0.416-0.988), needs for cardiac rehabilitation (OR=0.600,95%CI 0.374-0.962), and cardiac rehabilitation cognition (OR=0.665,95%CI 0.459-0.963) were the protective factors for CR participation in the elderly CHD patients, while difficulty in payment (OR=1.766,95%CI 1.043-2.993) and long one-way time from the residence to the hospital (OR=1.404,95%CI 1.105-1.783) were the risk factors. Conclusion The participation of the elderly CHD patients in in-hospital CR activities is low. Marital status, education level, medical payment burden, one-way time from the residence to the hospital, understanding of CR, needs for CR and cognition are the associating factors of CR participation.