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Exercise intolerance is a major burden for patients with complex congenital heart disease (CHD), significantly affecting their quality of life. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing provides a reliable tool both for assessing exercise capacity of CHD patients and for risk stratification and is becoming part of the routine clinical assessment of these patients. Exercise has an effect on the muscular, metabolic and circulatory systems. While exercise training has been widely studied in chronic heart failure, its efficacy in adults with CHD remain unknown. The investigators hypothesize that structured exercise training will improve exercise intolerance, in particular peak VO2. The aim of this multicenter, randomized study is to evaluate the impact of structured exercise training on exercise intolerance in patients with complex CHD.
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This is a randomized, prospective, multicenter, interventional study.
After study patients have given written consent they will be randomized either in the interventional group with a rehabilitation program or in the control group without rehabilitation program. Patients who are randomized in the control group are allowed to perform the rehabilitation program 12 months after randomisation. Patients in the interventional group will perform structured exercise training on 3 weekdays during a 12-weeks period. Training will be performed by ergometer and low-impact gymnastic and relaxation training.
All study participants have the following investigations at the beginning of the study and after 12 weeks:
Primary outcome is:
Comparison of peak VO2 at the end of rehabilitation between both groups.
Secondary outcomes are:
The calculated sample size to reach a power of 0.80 is 83 patients in each arm. Patients with complex CHD and exercise intolerance are at increased risk for premature death and severe cardiac complications including arrhythmia needing treatment, heart failure and circulatory failure, pulmonary hemorrhage, pulmonary embolism and endocarditis. Hence, the likelihood of major adverse cardiac events during the study phase is considerably high. However, there is no evidence of functional worsening by low-level exercise. Smaller studies with patients with congenital heart disease and/or pulmonary hypertension did not report safety issues. Although sudden cardiac death is one of the leading modes of death in this population, it is extremely rare that sudden death occurs during exercise. Cardiac patients who are at specific risk for exercise-induced arrhythmia are not included into the study (i.e. patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy).
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28 participants in 2 patient groups
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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov
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