MedWire News: Combined endurance and resistance training has greater benefits for patients with heart failure than endurance training alone, researchers have found.

Dr Paul Beckers, from Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium, and team explain that, despite advances in drug treatment, “patients with chronic heart failure are left with reduced exercise performance and poor quality of life”.

They say that, in recent years, endurance training programmes have proved to be effective at improving the physical capacity and quality of life of patients with heart failure.

But they add that few studies have investigated whether combining endurance with resistance training has any added benefits for such patients.

To investigate, the researchers studied 58 patients with chronic heart failure who were assigned to either 6 months of combined endurance and resistance training or 6 months of endurance training alone.

Analysis showed that all the patients experienced improvements in their exercise capacity and muscle strength, but such improvements were greater in patients assigned to the combined exercise programme than in those assigned to endurance therapy alone.

Furthermore, 60% of patients assigned to the combined training programme experienced a significant reduction in heart symptoms compared with just 28% of patients in the other group.

This indicates that the combined training programme was also associated with greater improvements in health-related quality of life than endurance training alone, says the team.

Writing in the European Heart Journal, Dr Beckers and team conclude: “The present study demonstrates that, compared with endurance training only, combined training in chronic heart failure patients is feasible, safe, and more effective in terms of submaximal exercise capacity and health-related quality of life.”

They add that, although larger studies are needed to confirm their findings, the results of the present study support the use of combined training in patients with heart failure.