Striking Similarities in Systemic Factors Contributing to Decreased Exercise Capacity in Patients With Severe Chronic Heart Failure or COPD

Abstract

Muscle dysfunction is not limited to the lower limbs, but generalized and comparable between patients with CHF and patients with COPD with similar exercise capacity. FFM is a strong predictor of peripheral muscle strength, to a lesser extent of O(2)peak, and not at all of peripheral muscle endurance.

L-carnitine as an ergogenic aid for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease submitted to whole-body and respiratory muscle training programs

“…These authors showed that patients with severe COPD or chronic heart failure were physically inactive, a fact assumed to have a negative or "detraining" effect on exercise capacity. In our study, we observed lower blood lactate levels, reduced maximal exercise capacity and high HR reserve compared to baseline values in patients with COPD, similar to other authors (25,30). Moreover, the higher HR reserve values demonstrated that patients with COPD were primarily limited by their ventilatory limitation and not by cardiac dysfunction, showing that a possible cardiac impairment was subordinate to pulmonary impairment in the present study.…”

“…Furthermore, Gosker et al (30) observed that COPD and chronic heart failure can lead to wasting and weakness of skeletal muscle. These authors showed that patients with severe COPD or chronic heart failure were physically inactive, a fact assumed to have a negative or "detraining" effect on exercise capacity.…”

Age-graded reductions in quadriceps muscle strength and peak aerobic capacity in COPD

“…About half of the patients were current smokers ( Table 1). LL-LMM, isokinetic quadriceps peak torque, and peak VO 2 were clearly reduced compared to published data from healthy elderly subjects 15,17,28 . At peak exercise, patients generally had little ventilatory reserve and rather high Borg symptom scores for dyspnea and fatigue (Table 2).…”

Reducción de la actividad física en pacientes con enfermedad pulmonar obstructiva crónica

“…Al igual que en el presente estudio, pero empleando cuestionarios diferentes, otros autores han observado una reducción signifi cativa de la AF total en los pacientes con EPOC en comparación con controles de edad similar [20][21][22][23] . Una ventaja de Figura 4.…”