Preliminary study of clinical significance of decreased D(L)CO in patients with left ventricular heart failure / 中国应用生理学杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>This study aimed to investigate the feature of D(L)CO (Diffusion Lung Capacity for Carbon Monoxide) in CHF (left ventricular heart failure) patients, underlying pathophysiological mechanism and clinical significance.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>We retrospectively studied the D(L)CO, pulmonary ventilation function, cardiopulmonary exercise testing and related clinical information in severer HF patients.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Peak VO2 severely decreased to 34 ± 7 percentage of predicted(%pred) and anaerobic threshold to 48 ± 11%pred in all patients. D(L)CO moderately decreased to 63 ± 12%pred and there were 25 patients lower than 80%pred. FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC and TLC were 75 ± 14%pred, 71 ± 17%pred, 97 ± 11%pred, and 79 ± 13%pred, which indicated borderline or mild restrictive ventilatory dysfunction. The decrease of D(L)CO was more severe than those of TLC, FEV1 and FVC.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>For patients with severe CHF, cardiopulmonary exercise function is extremely limited, D(L)CO generally moderately declines and ventilation function is merely mildly limited. D(L)CO is the parameter for cardiopulmonary coupling, reflecting limitation of the cardiovascular dysfunction while without ventilatory limit.</p>