Effect of Exercise-based Rehabilitation on Circulatory Functions in Patients With Diastolic Heart Failure

A quasi-experimental design will be used in this investigation. Eighty DHF patients will be recruited from Chang Gung Medical Foundation, Keelung Branch after they have provided informed consent. These subjects will be randomized into the trained (n=40) and the control groups (n=40). The trained subjects will be trained on a bicycle ergometer at about 60-70%of heart rate reserve for 35-55 minutes (that will include 10-min warm-up, 15-35-min main exercise, and 10-min cool-down) per day, 3 days per week for 12 weeks. The control subjects will maintain their normal living pattern. Subjects' physical fitness, oxygen transport and utilization of exercising skeletal muscles, cardiovascular functions and hemodynamics, blood cell parameters, RBC deformity and aggregation, plasma biomarkers of myocardial damage, and thrombotic factors/reactions will be measured at pre-training stage and following the 8th and 12th week of the training program. Experimental results were analyzed by descriptive statistics (percentage, mean, and standard deviation), independent t-test, two-way ANOVA, and two-way ANCOVA. Previous researches were mainly focus on systolic heart failure, less on diastolic heart failure. We study the above parameter to realize the physiological response to exercise of these patients and discover the appropriate exercise intensity for prescription.