Prognostic factors of chronic heart failure in NYHA class II or III: value of invasive exercise haemodynamic data

Abstract

The population consisted of 32 men and 18 women. No gender-related differences were found. Two groups could be distinguished in terms of prognosis: G1: n = 31 living patients with no events, and G2: n = 19 deceased or with major events. G1 and G2 were comparable with regard to age, sex ratio and ejection fraction. Several of the 52 parameters tested were different in the two groups, in particular peak VO2, exercise duration, the workload developed during the cardiopulmonary test and all the invasive exercise haemodynamic parameters except heart rate (P < 0.0001). Haemodynamic parameters at rest had no prognostic value in this series. The ROC curves, the survival curves and the Cox analysis showed that exercise cardiac power output, exercise left ventricular work indices and exercise peak VO2 were the most useful factors for assessing the prognosis of patients with NYHA II or III chronic heart failure. An exercise cardiac power output < 2 watts accurately identified those patients with a short-term poor prognosis, and exercise peak VO2 was almost as accurate. To a lesser extent, the NYHA functional class was also an independent prognostic parameter during multivariate analysis. In conclusion, it appears that invasive haemodynamic parameters are best for determining the prognosis of patients with chronic heart failure. Peak VO2 can, however, be as useful. Moreover this is an easily obtainable non-invasive parameter, which makes it more useful in the evaluation and the follow up of such patients.