Combo training helpful for heart failure patients

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For people with chronic heart failure, combined endurance and resistance training leads to better exercise capacity, muscle strength, and quality of life than endurance training alone, a study shows.

Despite improved medical treatments, "patients with chronic heart failure are left with reduced exercise performance and poor quality of life," Dr. Paul J. Beckers, of Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium, and colleagues write in the European Heart Journal.

"In recent years," they point out, "physical training has gained acceptance as a highly effective means to improve physical capacity and to reduce morbidity."

To see whether combined endurance and resistance training was more effective than endurance training alone in this regard, Beckers' team assigned 58 heart failure patients to one or the other type of program for 6 months.

Those in the endurance-resistance training group showed significantly greater gains in several measures of fitness compared with patients in the endurance-only training group.

The researchers observed significant increases in maximal strength in upper limbs in favor of the endurance-resistance training group. A strong trend for improved leg strength was also noted.

Regarding health-related quality of life, 60 percent of the combined endurance-resistance patients reported a significant decrease in cardiac symptoms compared with only 28 percent of patients in the endurance-only group, Beckers and colleagues report.

Four patients died during follow-up -- two in each group. No differences in mortality or hospitalization were observed between the groups. There were no adverse events reported during the rehabilitation program.

SOURCE: European Heart Journal, August 2008.