Exercise extends life even for heart failure patients
After a bout with heat failure, exercise may well be the last thing on your mind. But, maybe you should think again. A new study finds exercise extends life even for patients with heart failure.
The analysis in more than 4000 patients showed a mortality benefit from exercise regardless of heart failure severity, age and gender.
The research was presented today in a late breaking trial session at Heart Failure 2016 and the 3rd World Congress on Acute Heart Failure in Florence, Italy.
“Patients with heart failure should not be scared of exercise damaging them or killing them,” said principal investigator Professor Rod Taylor, chair of health services research and director of the Exeter Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Exeter Medical School in Exeter, UK.
“The message for heart failure patients is clear. Exercise is good for you, it will make you feel better, and it could potentially make you live longer.”
Professor Taylor and colleagues previously conducted a meta-analysis of randomized trials which showed that heart failure patients who exercised were admitted to hospital less often and had a better quality of life.
The effects on all-cause mortality were unclear because of differences between trials in the length of follow up.
Exercise Training Meta-Analysis of Trials in Heart Failure (ExTraMATCH II) is an international collaboration of researchers that has performed an individual patient data meta-analysis of trials randomizing heart failure patients to exercise or standard therapy.
While a traditional meta-analysis pools trial level data to investigate a question, this method analyses the data at patient level and therefore has stronger statistical power. It allowed the investigators to assess whether exercise had an impact on all-cause mortality and hospitalizations in heart failure patients, and see if the effect was different in particular subgroups.
To conduct the study, the investigators identified 23 randomized trials of exercise that included at least 50 heart failure patients who were followed up for six months or longer. After asking the authors of all 23 studies for individual patient data, they received the information from 20 trials.
The 20 trials included 4,043 patients with heart failure. The investigators used the individual patient data to assess the impact of exercise on the time to all-cause mortality and first hospitalization. They also examined the potential influence of patient characteristics including age, gender, heart failure severity (defined by New York Heart Association class), ischemic etiology, baseline left ventricular ejection fraction, and peak oxygen uptake.
The investigators found that exercise was associated with an 18% lower risk of all-cause mortality and an 11% reduced risk of hospitalization compared with no exercise.
Article by seniorjournal
Read more at http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Fitness/2016/20160523_Exercise-extends-life-even-for-heart-failure-patients.htm#7EMGGKRMToa15LRr.99
