Cardiopulmonary exercise testing in improving the rehabilitation of patients with heart failure and anemia

• Main Authors: Guşetu G., Zdrenghea M., Pop Dana, Popescu C., Mureşan Adina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Romanian Association of Balneology, Editura Balneara 2015-09-01
• Series: Balneo Research Journal
• Subjects: Cardiopulmonary; exercise testing
• Online Access: http://bioclima.ro/Balneo105.pdf

Anemia is known to be recurrent in heart failure patients and its presence is an unfavorable prognostic factor (1,2). However, treatment with iron supplements or erythropoietin has proven to improve the health of this category of patients (1,3). Except in cases when hemoglobin value is below 8g %, anemia does not exclude patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and/or heart failure from rehabilitation programs, but patients with anemia have lower exercise capacity and significantly lower VO2 peak increase than patients without anemia (4,5). Anemia associated with sedentary lifestyle complicates the situation, since they both decrease exercise capacity, and makes the choice of rehabilitation programs and exercise intensity more difficult, chiefly in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction, which has a considerable impact on the beneficial effects of physical activity.