Can strength and endurance training help heart failure patients live longer?
Wake Forest University School of Medicine has received a five-year grant worth $30 million from the National Institute of Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the potential benefits of a new-look rehabilitation program on patients who are hospitalized with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
Wake Forest professor Dalane Kitzman, MD, is leading the research. He and his team have developed a new-look physical rehabilitation program that focuses on strength, balance, endurance and mobility training exercises. Heart failure patients are often older and frail, Kitzman’s group observed, and they often never fully recover from their hospitalization. This new program was designed to be used by heart failure patients as early as possible once they arrive at the hospital and then continue on in an outpatient facility once the patient is discharged. After 12 weeks at the outpatient facility—three sessions per week—the patient then keeps doing the program’s exercises from their own home.
Kitzman et al. have already found that hospitalized patients with acute heart failure benefit physically from this program, publishing their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.[1] The goal of this latest analysis is to focus on the program’s impact on rehospitalization rates and patient mortality on patients hospitalized with HFpEF.
“We are targeting an important unmet need in one of the largest, most vulnerable and underserved populations,” Kitzman said in a prepared statement. “These patients with acute HFpEF don’t have many treatment options because most treatments previously tested have not been effective. These results could change clinical practice and improve the health of this high-risk population.”
Specialists from other facilities, including Duke University and Thomas Jefferson University, will also assist with the research. Patients from 20 different sites are expected to participate in the five-year study, and recruitment is scheduled to begin in early 2023.
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.