0000000000667833
AUTHOR
Adam C. Scott
Exercise hyperventilation in chronic heart failure is not caused by systemic lactic acidosis
Background: Patients with heart failure have an abnormally high ventilatory response to exercise associated with gas exchange defects and reduced arterial pCO2. Aims: We examined the possibility of lactic acidosis as the stimulus to this increased ventilation that abnormally depresses pCO2 during exercise in heart failure. Method and results: We studied 18 patients with chronic heart failure. We measured VE/VCO2 slope during exercise, arterial blood gases and lactate concentrations during cardiopulmonary exercise testing (rest, peak exercise and one minute after the end of exercise). Neither VE/VCO2 slope nor arterial pCO2 were related to arterial lactate concentrations at peak exercise (r=…
Differential contribution of dead space ventilation and low arterial pCO2 to exercise hyperpnea in patients with chronic heart failure secondary to ischemic or idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy
In chronic heart failure (CHF), the abnormally large ventilatory response to exercise (VE/VCO(2) slope) has 2 conceptual elements: the requirement of restraining arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO(2)) from increasing (because of an increased ratio between increased physiologic dead space and tidal volume [VD/VT]) and the depression of arterial pCO(2) by further increased ventilation, which necessarily implies an important non-carbon dioxide stimulus to ventilation. We aimed to assess the contribution of these 2 factors in determining the elevated VE/VCO(2) slope in CHF. Thirty patients with CHF underwent cardiopulmonary exercise testing (age 65 +/- 11 years, left ventricular e…