6-minute walking test in patients after cabg - assessment of exercise capacity

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: The 6-minute walk test is a well established diagnostic tool in clinical cardiology to determine exercise tolerance, prognostic measure, control and modify the implemented treatment. Aim: Assess exercise tolerance in patients with coronary artery disease after surgical coronary artery bypass grafting using 6-minute walk test in correlation with selected concomitant risk factors for coronary artery disease. Material and methods: Analysis of medical records of 100 randomly selected patients, diagnosed by coronary angiography and coronary heart disease, scheduled for CABG. Patients were evaluated using exercise tolerance as measured by 6MWT before and 12 months after CABG. The results were correlated with the selected risk factors. Results: The study group showed improvement in 6MWT distance of 43.17 m (± 104.41) at 12-months after CABG. In order to analyze which risk factors influenced the observed changes of the 6MWT distance, the obtained results were correlated with factors such as the age of patients, sex, hypertension and smoking. There was no effect of these parameters on shortening or lengthening the distance. Conclusions: 1. From selected coronary artery disease risk factors only hypertension adversely affected the 6MWT distance before CABG. 3. The CABG operation caused significant improvement of exercise tolerance in patients with worse baseline exercise tolerance.