Abstract
Purpose. To analyze and to compare the absolute and relative muscle power of the lower limbs in sedentary elderly subjects with and without heart failure. Methods. The study included 36 elderly subjects (72 ± 6.5 years, 76.8 ± 4.8 kg, 171 ± 9.4 cm) divided into two groups: sixteen patients with heart failure versus twenty patients with coronary artery disease, but without heart failure. The muscle power of the lower limbs was assessed with a half-squat exercise; three repetitions were performed with three seconds of the interval between repetitions as fast as possible in the concentric phase. For the statistical analysis, unpaired Student's t-tests were used to compare the absolute and relative muscular power between groups. Results. Subjects without heart failure had significantly greater absolute (362 ± 18.5 W vs. 438 ± 22.3 W, p = 0.015) and relative (4.6 ± 0.2 W / kg vs. 5.9 ± 0.2 W / Kg, p = 0.001) muscle power versus subjects with heart failure. Conclusion. Heart failure harms the muscular power of the lower limbs in the elderly, which may influence the prognosis and evolution of the disease and capacity functional.
Highlights
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading worldwide cause of premature death (Naghavi et al 2016), being the practice of strength training (ST) one important strategy for prevention and rehabilitation in this population (Drenowatz et al.2015, Price et al 2016, Shiroma et al 2017; Xanthos et al 2017; Hansen et al 2019; Singh et al 2019)
It was shown that the coronary artery disease (CAD) group exhibited significantly higher absolute muscle power (MP) than the heart failure (HF) group (438 ± 22.3 W vs. 362 ± 18.5 W; p = 0.015) (Figure 1)
The relative MP in CAD group was significantly higher than the HF group (5.9 ± 0.2 W / kg vs. 4.6 ± 0.2 W / kg, p = 0.001) (Figure 2)
Summary
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading worldwide cause of premature death (Naghavi et al 2016), being the practice of strength training (ST) one important strategy for prevention and rehabilitation in this population (Drenowatz et al.2015, Price et al 2016, Shiroma et al 2017; Xanthos et al 2017; Hansen et al 2019; Singh et al 2019) Another group that may benefit from this type of exercise is elderly by increasing the muscle function, mainly through muscle power (MP). HF and CAD are common diseases with age (Dharmarajan et al 2017) characterized by structural or functional impairment of ventricular filling or blood ejection (Yancy et al 2013) and an atherosclerotic occlusion that results in functional alterations of coronary arteries (European Society of Cardiology, 2013), respectively Both imply hemodynamic and neuroendocrine adaptations, such as parasympathetic withdrawal, impaired regulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, and inflammatory status (Malakar et al 2019). The physical function is impaired, affecting the performance in activities of daily living, independence, and quality of life negatively (Fragala et al 2019)
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