Rehabilitation in Chronic Congestive Heart Failure (original) (raw)
The purpose of this study was to investigate if electrical stimulation of strength muscles could represent an alternative or a complementary way of rehabilitation in congestive heart failure (CHF). Twentyfour patients with chronic stable CHF (NYHA class II-III) were randomly assigned to a rehabilitation program using either a classical bicycle training program (group 1; n=12) or an electrical stimulation of inferior limb muscles (group 2; n=12). Six-minute corridor walk-test and symptom-limited spiroergometry were performed before and after the training program. After the end of rehabilitation a significant increase of distance walked in 6min, oxygen uptake (V. O 2SL), maximal heart rate (HR max) and maximal achieved workload (W max) were observed in both groups. There was a close correlation between improvement of V. O 2SL and increase in HR max in the group 1 (r = 0.64; P < 0.05). A similar relationship was found between V. O 2SL and the increase in W max (r = 0.65; P < 0.05), and between V. O 2SL and the increase in exercise duration (r = 0.68, P < 0.02), but only in the group 1. The results showed that an improvement of exercise capacities can be achieved either by classical training method or by electrical stimulation.
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