Prognostic risk stratification and associated factors in patients
Cardiovascular Diseases, Cardiac Rehabilitation, Exercise Therapy, Risk Assessment.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) alter the physical capacity of patients, besides contributing to increased health expenses. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is recognized as an important instrument of this process. However, during this practice, cardiac patients may present adverse events associated with exercise. Therefore, it is essential to perform the risk stratification of these patients before starting the CR program. The aim of our study was to analyze the prognostic risk and adverse events of patients who were treated in a CR program at the Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit of the Onofre Lopes University Hospital - CORE/HUOL. This is a retrospective study regarding risk stratification of patients referred for CR in the Cardiac Rehabilitation Unit of the Onofre Lopes University Hospital - CORE HUOL. Cardiovascular risk was analyzed according to the recommendation for CPET published by the AHA (2012), which stratified the variables of CPET through colors: green (better prognosis), yellow, orange and red (worst prognosis). For this classification, we used the variables of the pre and post CR stress tests of our patients. Statistical analysis was performed using the software (IBM SPSS version 22.0). Most of the sample was didactically classified as moderate pre CR risk (78.6%) and post CR
(64.3%), because they presented a higher number of test variables in yellow, orange and red. The mean VE/VCO2 slope was 35.2±9.4, being stratified in orange. And this value significantly reduced to 33.6±6.8 after the CR period (p<0.05), which changed the classification to yellow. Peak VO2 had a mean higher than 20.0ml.kg-1.min-1, being classified as green. And it showed a moderate and positive correlation with the test time pre CR (0.53/p=0.00) and post CR (0.60/p=0.01). We identified an association between heart rate recovery stratification and the presence of diabetes mellitus (p<0.05). Therefore, we observed that most variables classified in yellow, orange and red indicate that our patients present a progressively higher risk in the coming years. In addition, the improvement in the stratification of variables after the CR period indicates the importance of our exercise program. And when we observed variables related to the stratification metrics used, we show that other variables should be considered during the risk assessment of the cardiopathic patient.