Exercise capacity in early and late adult heart transplant recipients.

Background: The aim of this study was to compare peak oxygen consumption (VO(2)), heart rate (HR) reserve and HR recovery in early and late heart transplant recipients. Moreover, we also aimed to correlate peak VO(2) and HR reserve.

Methods: Fivteen heart transplant recipients (8 early and 7 late), 8 ± 3 and 161 ± 58 months after transplantation, respectively, performed a cardiopulmonary exercise test.

Results: Early heart transplant recipients showed lower HR reserve compared to late heart transplant recipients, 39 ± 15 vs. 58 ± 19 bpm (p = 0.049), respectively. Peak VO(2) (23.4 ± 4 vs. 21.8 ± 5 mL/kg/min, p = 0.56), VO(2) respiratory compensation point (18.7 ± 2 vs. 18.5 ± 4 mL/ /kg/min, p = 0.48) and time of exercise testing (14 ± 3 vs. 13 ± 3 min, p = 0.95) %age- -predicted peakVO(2) (65 ± 12 vs. 70 ± 10%, p = 0.24) were not different between the groups. Moreover, peak VO2 and %age-predicted peakVO(2) correlated with HR reserve only in early heart transplant recipients (r = 0.89, p = 0.003 and r = 0.71, p = 0.04, respectively). Early heart transplant recipients increased HR (2.5 ± 2.0% at fi rst minute and 0.7 ± 2.3% at the second minute), while late recipients decreased HR (-6.0 ± 4.7 at fi rst minute and -15.5 ± 2.4 at the second minute) at the recovery period of cardiopulmonary exercise test.

Conclusions: Exercise capacity did not show difference between early and late heart transplant recipients. HR reserve was higher in late compared to early recipients. HR reserve only correlated with peak VO(2) in early recipients. Moreover, only late heart transplant recipients showed decrease in HR during the recovery period of cardiopulmonary exercise test.