Effects of exercise training on aerobic fitness in children after open heart surgery

Abstract

Graded treadmill tests to maximal exercise were given to 24 children 1 year or more after open-heart surgery and to 26 age- and sex-matched controls, before and after 9 weeks of exercise training to test whether or not they could increase their aerobic fitness levels. The corrected cardiac lesions included tetralogy of Fallot, aortic stenosis, transposition of the great arteries and atrioventricular canal (AVC). Maximal exercise variables measured were heart rate (HR), oxygen consumption (VO2), and workload (stage of exercise and time on treadmill). The results of the pretraining tests indicated that the fitness levels of the 24 patients were significantly less than those of the controls. Of the original groups, 9 controls and 12 patients satisfactorily completed the training (jogging) program. The results of the post-training tests indicated that both the patients and controls significantly improved their fitness levels. Specifically, most subjects improved their maximal workload with little or no increase in maximal HR or VO2. In conclusion, children after open-heart surgery for complex congenital heart disease can further improve their work capacity by a dynamic exercise program. After training, they are able to do more work at a given VO2.

Exercise Studies in Tetralogy of Fallot: A Review

“…As was pointed out by Cumming [12], these findings probably resulted in part from a greater maximal effort during the exercise but also from a better physical fitness of the Canadian children due to a greater level of physical activity in general compared to U.S. children. The importance of physical activity is also supported by subsequent training studies after ICR, which all showed improved physical performance after training [5,7,25,74], and by observations that patients who participate in varsity sports after ICR perform better than nonathletes [36,93].…”

“…If training is carried out at home, true verification of the training activity is a most difficult task. Nevertheless, four such studies were reported [5,7,25,74] involving a total of 30 patients (range 1-16). Duration of training varied from 6 to 12 weeks with two or three sessions per week of variable intensity.…”

“…Moreover, sustained ventricular tachycardia has been provoked during electrophysiologic studies in the absence of any ventricular arrhythmia during exercise [15,45]. The incidence of ventricular arrhythmias with exercise varied greatly between studies from 0% [42, 62,74,84] to as much as 73.3% of patients [71]. The data suggest that ventricular arrhythmias are related primarily to three factors: the date of surgery, the surgical outcome of ICR, and the length of follow-up after ICR.…”

Impact of Cardiac Rehabilitation on the Exercise Function of Children With Serious Congenital Heart Disease

“…In those studies that have detected an improvement in exercise function, the mechanisms that were responsible for the observed improvements have not been elucidated. 15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] We therefore undertook this study to characterize more clearly the effect of a 12-week pediatric cardiac rehabilitation program on the exercise performance and cardiopulmonary function of children with CHD and to define the physiologic mechanisms that account for any improvements that may be observed.…”

Dynamic of bio-geometric profile indicators of children’s with functionally one ventricle posture at stage of physical rehabilitation

“…The most wide-scale studies of physical loads' influence in cardio-rehabilitation programs for persons with CHD were made by J. Rhodes [26][27][28] -increase of peak VO 2 and maximal load for long period; P. E. Longmuir [20,21] -long term improvement of physical fitness indicators; L. M. Bradley [10] -improvement of peak VO 2 and endurance; I. C. Balfour [8] -improvement of peak VO 2 ; B. Goldberg [16] -improvement of maximal power and workability, influence on peak VO 2 was absent; H. D. Ruttenberg [29], P. M. Fredriksen [13] -improvement of endurance, influence on peak VO 2 was absent.…”