Exercise-related ventilatory abnormalities are more specific for functional impairment in chronic heart failure than reduction in peak exercise oxygen consumption.

Background: Impaired functional capacity during exercise is used to assess need for transplantation in congestive heart failure patients, although impaired capacity is present in several chronic illnesses. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that ventilatory abnormalities during exercise, rather than functional capacity, are specific to congestive heart failure patients.

Methods: We compared exercise-related gas exchange among a group of congestive heart failure patients and a group of patients who had chronic liver disease and normal cardiac function, matched for functional impairment, and a group of normal controls.

Isometric muscle strength in alcoholic and nonalcoholic liver-transplantation candidates.

Intensity of isometric muscle contractions was measured in alcoholic subjects with cirrhosis (N = 42), nonalcoholic subjects with cirrhosis (N = 33), and normal controls (N = 31). Muscle strength and endurance were comparable in the alcoholic and nonalcoholic cirrhotic subjects for all variables. Both cirrhotic groups were inferior to normal controls for all variables.

Isokinetic muscle strength and its association with neuropsychological capacity in cirrhotic alcoholics.

Alcoholic cirrhotics (n = 49), nonalcoholic cirrhotics (n = 42), and normal controls (n = 50) were compared on measures of isokinetic muscle strength and neuropsychological capacity. Alcoholic cirrhotics were deficient on measures of eccentric and concentric muscle movements, compared with normal controls but were not different from nonalcoholic cirrhotics. Nor were differences observed between the two cirrhotic groups on neuropsychological tests of cognitive and psychomotor capacity, suggesting that cirrhosis rather than alcoholism per se is responsible for the manifest deficits.