Getting Into Light Exercise for Patients With Heart Failure

The over-arching goal of this research is to fill the substantial gap in knowledge about whether gentle forms of exercise will provide health benefits in patients with heart failure (HF). This gap is a particularly urgent problem as the prevalence and mortality rates for HF are rising. While medical therapy and standard exercise programs are known to decrease HF mortality and improve psychological outcomes, participation rates in standard exercise are low. Heart failure is a severe, life-limiting medical problem that affects millions of Americans and is the most common hospital discharge diagnosis in patients 65 and older. Patients with HF experience severe, distressing symptoms such as dyspnea and depression, along with co-morbid conditions that make standard exercise challenging. Therefore, lighter types of exercise, such as gentle stretching, may be particularly appealing and lead to higher exercise participation rates. Gentle stretching has been shown to improve blood pressure, breathlessness, and mood in patients with chronic diseases such as hypertension, lung disease, and depression, but few studies include patients with HF. Gentle stretching is an adaptable exercise that can be modified for co-morbid conditions such as arthritis, or symptoms, such as breathlessness. Our preliminary data show that short-term stretching is safe and feasible.

The goal of this study, GEtting iN To Light Exercise in Heart Failure: GENTLE-HF, is to test whether patients with stable HF will adhere to a long-term yoga exercise intervention, delivered via videoconferencing, using i-pads at home, compared to a health education group.

We will also test whether the intervention group has improvements in physical (endurance, balance, flexibility, strength) and psychological (depression, quality of life and self-care) function and HF severity biomarkers.

A sample of 100 adult HF patients will be recruited from the University of Virginia, Heart and Vascular Center Clinics and the University of California-John Muir. Yoga exercise participants will participate in 3 months of live, home-based, video-conference delivered, twice-weekly home yoga exercise classes, then 3 months of combined recorded and live exercise (6 months total) that enable transition to home exercise. The health education group participants will participate in 3 months of health education classes via ipad and then 3 months of reminders to complete symptom diaries. If effective, yoga exercise could be integrated into national guidelines for cardiac rehabilitation as a standard to improve distressing symptoms in patients with HF.