Objective:

Heart failure is a clinical syndrome characterized by a decrease in functional capacity. Cardiac rehabilitation and secondary prevention (CR&SP) programs have been shown to improve quality of life and excercise tolerance in this group of patients, but their effects depends on training volume. Our objective is to evaluate the level of correlation of the training volume measured in metabolic equivalents (MET)-min/week with the percentage of peak oxygen consumption (VO2p) gain (estimated MET) after a CR&SP in patients with chronic heart failure.

Method:

Quasi-experimental study that evaluated the gain of VO2p (estimated MET) in 31 patients after a CR&SP, prior and post-exercise test, which consisted of 30 min of dynamic training at 70% heart rate reserve (HRR) for 6 weeks, with strenght training and interdisciplinary intervention. The training volume of each patient was calculated in MET-min/week (Kaminsky’s method). Spearman’s Rho correlation index was measured and stochastic significance was considered whith a value of p < 0.05.

Results:

70.6% were male, average age 61.5 years ± 8.9, with left ventricular ejection fraction average of 38 ± 4.6%; 96.8% of the heart failure had an ischemic origin; 55.9, 29.4 and 5.9% in New York Heart Association funstional class I, II and III, respectively. With an average training volume of 504.34 ± 164 MET-min/week. The best correlation was obtained in high-risk population with Rhol: 0.486 (p = 0.008) meassured by estimated VO2p.

Conclusions:

Although there is a substantial gain in excersise tolerance measured by estimated VO2p, we did not obtain a sufficient level of correlation between the volume of training applied and the gain obtained.

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