| Cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) allows for the analysis of gas exchange at rest, during exercise, and during recovery and is of great value in the field of cardiology. When compared with other exercise test, the results of CPET seem to be more accurate, objective and repeatable. The value of CPET to predict the prognosis of heart failure patients and to select heart transplant candidates has been recognized worldwide. Recently, there has been some advances of CPET in the field of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, pediatric heart failure, cardiovascular diseases during pregnant and prognosis assessment after heart transplant.Firstly, we focus on the timing to perform CPET in heart failure patients. We studied the relationship between N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and CPET parameters (PeakVO2 and VE/VCO2) in heart failure patients. We demonstrated that NT-proBNP could reflect the aerobic capacity of heart failure patients to some degree. For the patients who have received optimal anti-heart failure treatments, if NT-proBNP is above 1200pg/ml continuously, their aerobic capacity may have undergone serious damage and should perform CPET as soon as possible.Secondly, we explore the relationship between ventilator efficiency of cardiopulmonary exercising test (the slope of the relation between ventilation andcarbon dioxide production,VE/VCO2slope) and systolic pulmonary artery pressure(sPAP) measured by echocardiogram of primary left heart failure (HF) patients. There exsits a significant linear correlation between VE/VCO2 slope and SPAP. If VE/VCO2slope> 34.2, there will be high possibility of sPAP> 50 mmHg. Invasive hemodynamic examination and special therapy are necessary then. |
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