Chest
Clinical Investigations: ExerciseThe Effects of Body Composition Changes to Observed Improvements in Cardiopulmonary Parameters After Exercise Training With Cardiac Rehabilitation
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
We prospectively evaluated 500 consecutive patients 4 to 6 weeks following a major cardiac event (coronary bypass surgery, myocardial infarction, percutaneous coronary angioplasty) who were referred for cardiac rehabilitation at the Cardiovascular Health Center of Ochsner Medical Institutions. Patients participated in outpatient cardiac rehabilitation and exercise training that lasted 12 weeks and included 36 educational and exercise sessions. Each session consisted of approximately 10 min of
Results
The mean age of the cohort was 63±11 years, and 80% of the study population was male. The percent body fat was 26.2±8.0 at baseline and decreased to 24.8±7.5 (—5%; p<0.0001) following cardiac rehabilitation (Table 1). Although there was a modest 1% reduction in total weight (83.0±17.5 to 82.0±16.4 kg; p<0.0001) following the rehabilitation program, lean body mass (LBM) increased a modest 1% (61.3±12.5 to 61.7±11.8 kg; p=0.02). Weight-adjusted increased by 16% (16.0±4.1 to 18.5±4.8
Discussion
This investigation demonstrates that reduction in body fat contributes to the “observed” improvement in weight-adjusted following exercise conditioning programs, such as cardiac rehabilitation, thereby overestimating the true improvement present. Furthermore, although a training effect was clearly present, exercise conditioning alone was responsible for 88% of the improvement noted in weight-adjusted peak aerobic capacity.
Dietary modification of both fat, and when appropriate, total
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