Response to Aerobic Exercise in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension

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Abstract

PH patients participating in exercise training (EXE) showed significant improvement in the six-minute walk test distance, cardiorespiratory function measures and patient-reported health-related quality of life compared with their education only (EDU) counterparts. While the number of ILD patients is still small, similar improvements were also observed. Comparison of both PH and ILD patients to healthy control volunteers demonstrates the level of functional impairment experienced by these patients on a daily basis. The increased number of total patients in all groups (PH, ILD and healthy volunteers) has allowed us to present preliminary findings for this study. In October 2011, we presented data on the PH group at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. This study was awarded the Alfred Soffer Research Award for outstanding original research presented during this meeting. Several other abstracts were also recently presented at the annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine in May 2012 and the American Psychosomatic Society in March 2012. The first manuscript emanating from this research will be published by Chest shortly (accepted and in press). There are several more manuscripts in progress that are expected to be published within the year. Although the exercise training volume and intensity have been well tolerated by most of the patients, some have decided to withdraw from our study. To date, one patient withdrew because the minimum number of exercise training sessions could not be met; one withdrew due to the fatigue caused by a separate medical condition that affected the patients muscles; another withdrew from the study because of work schedule conflicts; others were excluded due to medication changes (3 patients) and one could not be included due to incomplete baseline testing.