Cardiopulmonary Stress Testing In Heart Failure With Normal Ejection Fraction

Introduction: The cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPX) provides data that guide treatment, prognosis and decision making. However its use in heart failure with normal ejection fraction (HFnEF) is still not all clear, especially considering new variables that are emerging. Objective: To compare the behavior of key diagnostic and prognostic variables of CPX testing between two groups; patients with heart with reduced ejection fraction of (HfrEF) and those with HFnEF). Methods: 36 patients with heart failure were evaluated in Nyah functional class II-III: 20 with HFnEF and 16 patients with HFrEF at the Hospital Universitario Antonio Pedro (UFF). The patients from HFrEF group were those with EF<35%, and those from the HFnEF group follow the diagnostic criteria of the European Society of Cardiology 2007. CPX was performed on a treadmill with a ramp protocol, with gas analyzer VO2000. The Student t test, Mann-Whitney test and Fisher, generalized linear model and the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test for statistical analysis were applied. Results: The HFnEF group presented higher levels of blood pressure at rest, higher response to exertion, higher circulatory and ventilatory power, and longer recovery kinetics of oxygen uptake. There was no difference in relation to other prognostic variables of CPX in the HFrEF group. Conclusions: The blood pressure at rest and during exercise, the circulatory and ventilatory capacity and the kinetics of VO2 (T1/2), were the variables that showed the highest discriminative value between the two populations by CPX.