Absence of Exercise Capacity Improvement After Exercise Training Program

Abstract

Background— Exercise training is established as adjuvant therapy for chronic heart failure, but the prognostic value of improvement in exercise capacity after exercise training has never been evaluated. Methods and Results— In this prospective bicentric study, all chronic heart failure patients with left ventricular ejection fraction P P P P =0.01). The risk ratio of cardiac events for nonresponse versus response to the training program (defined as median δ%PPV o 2 P =0.0006). Conclusions— Among patients with chronic heart failure, the lack of improvement in exercise capacity after an exercise training program has strong prognostic value for adverse cardiac events independent of classical predictive factors such as left ventricular ejection fraction, New York Heart Association class, and B-type natriuretic peptide level.