The maximal exercise capacity of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) is frequently reduced, partly because of inadequate skeletal muscle nutritive flow. To investigate whether this altered muscle nutritive flow is a result of inability of the heart to increase cardiac output normally during exercise, the effect of dobutamine on systemic and leg blood flow and metabolism during maximal exercise was examined in 11 patients with CHF. At maximal exercise before dobutamine, all patients were limited by fatigue and had reduced maximal systemic oxygen uptake (11.9 +/- 1.1 ml/min/kg) (+/- standard error of the mean), markedly elevated leg oxygen extraction (85 +/- 2%) and elevated femoral venous lactate (53 +/- 5 mg/dl), consistent with impaired nutritive flow to working muscle. Dobutamine increased the peak cardiac output from (6.5 +/- 0.9 0.74 +/- 0.7 liters/min, p less than 0.01) and peak leg flow (from 1.7 +/- 0.3 to 2.1 +/- 0.3 liters/min, p less than 0.05) during exercise. In contrast, no change occurred in maximal exercise duration (5.5 +/- 0.8 vs 5.8 +/- 0.8 min), peak systemic VO2 (829 +/- 97 vs 869 +/- 77 ml/min), peak arterial lactate (34 +/- 2 vs 35 +/- 4 mg/dl) or peak leg lactate output (248 +/- 39 vs 275 +/- 53 mg/min), whereas peak leg oxygen extraction decreased (85 +/- 2 to 80 +/- 2%, p less than 0.01), suggesting no improvement in muscle nutritive flow. These data suggest that nutritive flow to working skeletal muscle is impaired in patients with CHF and that this impairment is not due simply to an inability of the heart to increase the cardiac output normally during exercise.