Regional blood flow in chronic heart failure: the reason for the lack of correlation between patients' exercise tolerance and cardiac output?

Abstract

Background-In patients with chronic heart failure there is no relation between

Endogenous insulin and insulin sensitivity. An important determinant of skeletal muscle blood flow in chronic heart failure?

“…The non-invasive methods used for this study have all been well-validated and the coefficient of variation (CV%) has previously been reported for patients studied in our laboratory as follows: cardiac output 7·8% superior mesenteric artery blood flow 10·1% and right renal artery blood flow 10·8% [15] . The CV% for forearm blood flow was 10·5% [16] .…”

“…Blood flow in the cerebral and coronary circulations is generally well-preserved, whereas blood flow to skeletal muscle in the limbs in substantially reduced. As limb blood flow may be more important than cardiac output as a determinant of exercise capacity in heart failure [15] , there is interest in therapeutic interventions that can selectively increase blood flow to this region.…”

Skin Moisture and Heat Transfer

“…These reactive oxygen species can in turn cause cellular damage. Oxidative stress potentially can be moderated via activating NADPH oxidases or xanthine oxidases in the vascular wall [ 28,77 ] .…”

Effects of Rehabilitation in Patients with Cardiac Disease

“…The indirect Fick principle using carbon dioxide as the indicator is well established in this laboratory (Cowley et al 1986a;Muller et al 1992;Walsh et aI. 1995 In a study involving 17 healthy subjects Muiesan et al (1968) found the rebreathing method underestimated cardiac output compared to direct Fick measurements.…”

“…The method used was that described by Whitney (1953) and is now an established technique in this laboratory (Cowley et al 1986b;Muller et al 1992;Walsh et al 1995). It is based on the premise that arterial blood flow can be indirectly determined by occluding venous flow and the change in limb volume corresponds to arterial inflow.…”