Respiratory Muscle Strength, the Six-Minute Walk Test and Quality of Life in Chagas Cardiomyopathy

Abstract

The inspiratory muscle strength is reduced, and the decreased quality of life has a negative influence on the physical and emotional aspects of the patients with Chagas cardiomyopathy. No correlation was found between perceived exertion and the reduction of respiratory muscle strength.

Health-related quality of life in patients with Chagas disease: a review of the evidence

“…Of these, 10 were published in international journals, and 2 were published in Brazilian journals. Six cross-sectional studies evaluated HRQoL in ChD patients (Table 1) (5) (10) (14) (15) (16) (17) , two verifi ed the effect of non-surgical conservative treatments on HRQoL in Chagas dilated cardiomyopathy patients (Table 2) (18) (19) , and 4 correlated HRQoL with functional capacity in ChD patients (Table 3) (20) (21) (22) (23) . The studies found in our literature search showed heterogeneity in the patient samples: one article included patients presenting with all clinical forms of ChD (8.3%), two (16.7%) included patients with pacemakers, two (16.7%) did not mention the presence of cardiopathy, and 7 (58.3%) included patients with cardiopathy.…”

“…Other studies indicated however that the presence of cardiac involvement in the disease seemed to have a negative effect on the patients' HRQoL. Vieira et al (23) compared the HRQoL between ChD patients with cardiopathy (n = 16, aged AQUAREL: assessment of quality of life and related events; ChD: Chagas disease; HRQoL: health-related quality of life; MLwHFQ: Minnesota living with heart failure questionnaire; PEDro: physiotherapy evidence database; SF-36: short-form of health survey; WHOQOL-BREF: WHO quality of life-BREF.…”

Reassessment of quality of life domains in patients with compensated Chagas heart failure after participating in a cardiac rehabilitation program

“…The major findings of the present study were improvements in some physical-related QOL domains (physical functioning, role-physical, and bodily pain) and in the physical summary score of patients with Chagas heart failure after completing an 8-month cardiac rehabilitation program. These results are particularly important since studies have demonstrated that cardiac symptoms exert an important negative influence on QOL in patients with Chagas disease 13 . A previous analysis of the same dataset using a disease-specific questionnaire (Minnesota Living with Heart Failure) showed no overall improvement in health-related QOL, except among those with the greatest severity of cardiac impairment at baseline, reinforcing the deleterious impact of cardiac symptoms on health-related QOL 10 .…”

Cardiac rehabilitation program in patients with Chagas heart failure: a single-arm pilot study

“…All participants included in the study exhibited reduced respiratory muscle strength at baseline, as previously shown in patients with Chagas cardiomyopathy (36) (37) . Indeed, it is possible that any training stimulus, regardless of specificity to respiratory muscles, may improve respiratory muscle strength and decrease related symptoms, such as dyspnea and exercise intolerance (38) .…”