The present study is the first to report detailed information about the metabolic requirement of five simple self-paced domestic ADLs in patients with CHF. Despite optimal cardiac drug treatment, patients with CHF performing simple self-paced domestic ADLs consumed oxygen at a higher proportion to their peak oxygen uptake than healthy elderly subjects. Moreover, patients with CHF had significantly higher Borg symptom scores for dyspnoea and fatigue after each domestic ADL.
Even though the task-related oxygen uptake (ml/min and ml/kg/min) was similar or even a little bit lower in patients with CHF compared to healthy age-matched subjects, the relative metabolic requirement was clearly higher in patients. Indeed, a significantly lower peak oxygen uptake obtained during CPET in patients with CHF is most probably the main reason for this finding.
So, the performance of five simple domestic ADLs is laying a relatively moderate-to-high claim to the impaired peak aerobic capacity of patients with CHF (Fig.
1b). To our surprise, putting on two socks, two shoes and a vest resulted in a mean task-related oxygen uptake of 49% of the peak oxygen uptake obtained during CPET, while sweeping the floor for 4 min resulted in a mean task-related oxygen uptake of 52% of the peak oxygen uptake obtained during CPET. Indeed, many physical exercise training programs in CHF are initially performed at a training intensity of 50–60% of peak oxygen uptake obtained during CPET (Barnard et al.
2000; Delagardelle et al.
2002; Feiereisen et al.
2007). These findings may, at least in part, explain the daily experience of symptoms of dyspnoea and fatigue that patients with CHF frequently report (Raphael et al.
2007). Indeed, the relative requirement on the impaired cardiopulmonary system is clearly higher than in healthy peers (Figs.
1b,
2,
3).
Interestingly, patients with COPD also used about 50% of the peak aerobic capacity during sweeping the floor for 5 min (Velloso et al.
2003). So, patients with chronic organ failure seem to have comparable metabolic requirements to execute simple domestic ADLs, irrespective of the type of primary organ failure. This may not come as a complete surprise. Indeed, similarities between patients with CHF or COPD were reported for body composition, muscle strength and endurance of the upper and lower limbs, self-reported physical activity levels and peak aerobic capacity (Franssen et al.
2002; Gosker et al.
2003).
The extent to which improvements in peak aerobic capacity following an exercise-based CHF rehabilitation program (Rees et al.
2004) may improve the performance of domestic ADLs and decrease symptom scores in patients with CHF remains uncertain and warrants additional research. Indeed, it seems reasonable to postulate that an improved peak aerobic capacity can at least in part reduce the relatively high metabolic requirement on the impaired cardiopulmonary system in CHF.
Methodological considerations
The external validity of the present findings is limited to CHF patients with NYHA II and III. Thus, the present data should not be uncritically applied to NYHA I and IV patient subsets. Moreover, the authors a priori choose to assess the metabolic requirement of five simple domestic ADLs, specifically excluding relevant daily physical activities like walking. In fact, the relatively high metabolic requirement of walking has already been studied in CHF (Kervio et al.
2004).
The extent to which task-related oxygen uptake will change by altering the order of the tested five domestic ADLs remains uncertain. Surprisingly, Borg symptom scores for dyspnea and fatigue were rather low after each domestic ADL, which suggests that the tested ADLs were not ADLs that the patients found particularly troublesome. These results suggest that patients with CHF may adjust their activity level such that with a relatively higher strain they reach rather low symptom scores. In addition, it may also be an indication that any individual ADL task in isolation does not create symptoms. It will therefore be important in future studies to assess the specific ADL tasks which patients find particularly troubling as well as the effects of a combination of tasks in various orders of succession. Certainly, this may be challenging, as the variability in ADL tasks that individuals find troubling is likely to be wide (Raphael et al.
2007). Nonetheless, such detailed examination of the effects of ADLs will potentially lead to a better understanding of what makes ADL tasks troubling in CHF and the further development of known interventional strategies, like comprehensive patient-tailored rehabilitation programs. For daily clinical routine, validated questionnaires and/or semi-structured interviews are suitable to identify problematic ADLs in patients with CHF (Raphael et al.
2007; Sewell and Singh
2001).
Unfortunately, the degree of task-related hyperventilation (reflected by the slope of increase of ventilation relative to carbon dioxide production) remains unknown. In fact, the portable system used to assess task-related metabolic requirements provides reliable measurement of task-related oxygen uptake and ventilation, but is less reliable for measuring carbon dioxide production (Diaz et al.
2008). Moreover, the ventilatory threshold has been widely applied in patients with CHF. Nevertheless, significant error in interpreting the ventilatory threshold in CHF patients will occur even with experienced reviewers (Myers et al.
2010). Therefore, future studies may want to consider the assessment of (arterial) lactate to determine inadequate oxygen supply to the mitochondria during simple ADLs (Wasserman et al.
1990).
The increased physiologic strain in patients with CHF may be due to the presence of COPD (Dickstein et al.
2008; Norberg et al.
2008). Indeed, 17% of the current CHF patients have COPD, which is in line with previous studies (Le Jemtel et al.
2007). Nevertheless, differences in task-related oxygen uptake between CHF patients and healthy subjects remained after exclusion of CHF patients with COPD. Finally, the current findings need to be interpreted in the light of the number of comparisons/correlations that were made in the present study (Perneger
1998). However, multiple findings in the same direction, rather than a single ‘statistically significant’ result, suggest that these are not due to chance alone.
To conclude, patients with CHF experience a relative metabolic requirement during the performance of self-paced domestic ADLs that is not similar that seen in their healthy peers. These findings may not be extraordinary, but are novel and represent a necessary step in improving our understanding of what troubles patients the most—not being able to do the things that they could when they were healthy. Building upon our current findings and carrying out more detailed descriptive studies as well as interventional studies including studying the effects of exercise-based rehabilitation programs [using interval type of training (Meyer et al.
1998)] and/or patient-tailored occupation therapy [using energy-conservation techniques (Velloso and Jardim
2006)] will certainly be worthwhile endeavours and may get us to the heart of the matter.
Ethical standards: The present study complies with the current laws of the Netherlands. The institutional review board of the Maastricht University Medical Centre (MEC08-3-032) approved this study. All tests were performed at the CIRO+ and were in accordance with the World Medical Association declaration of Helsinki.