Regular paperEffect of exercise on upper and lower extremity endothelial function in patients with coronary artery disease
Section snippets
Research subjects
Patients referred for management of CAD, including cardiac rehabilitation, were eligible to participate in the study. All had angiographically documented CAD (at least 1 coronary stenosis >50%). Subjects were excluded if they had unstable angina, acute myocardial infarction within 1 week, uncontrolled systemic hypertension, claudication, clinically significant valvular disease, decompensated congestive heart failure, or any condition that would preclude safely withholding vasoactive medications
Clinical characteristics
A total of 58 subjects were studied, and their baseline characteristics are listed in Table 1. Subjects in the exercise and control groups had similar characteristics with regard to age, traditional cardiac risk factors, prior revascularization, gender distribution, and medical therapy.
As expected, a program of regular endurance training was associated with a significant increase in exercise tolerance in the exercise group. Mean exercise capacity was 7.3 ± 2.2 METs at baseline, and increased to
Discussion
This is the first prospective study to evaluate the effects of endurance exercise as prescribed in cardiac rehabilitation on vascular function in both the upper and lower limbs of patients with documented CAD. This present study demonstrated the salient finding that a supervised, 10-week endurance training program characterized by lower extremity exercise improves flow-mediated dilation of the posterior tibial artery in patients with CAD. A nonsignificant increase in brachial artery
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Helene Glassberg, Thomas Maguire, and Cheryl Spahn for their assistance with data collection for this study.
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