Georgiou Heart Failure Study Promotes Exercise

A Greek cardiologist in New York and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, Demetrios Georgiou, along with his Italian colleague Romualdo Belardinelli, published the results of a 10-year study on Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that shows the value of exercise

Georgiou comes from Thessaloniki and is founder of the Astoria Cardiovascular Services and member of the American Heart Association. He fulfilled his studies and has a multi-annual experience in Italy and the US. Among the results of the study were that chronic heart failure patients can maintain an advantage as a result of combining exercise therapy and standard care, because they demonstrate improved functional capacity and quality of life compared with patients receiving standard medications who do not exercise regularly.

“We studied 123 patients with CHF whose condition was stable over the previous 3 months. After randomization, a trained group underwent a supervised exercised training (ET) at 60% of peak oxygen consumption (Vo2) two times weekly for 10 years, whereas a non-trained group did not exercise formally. The ET program was supervised and performed mostly at a coronary club with periodic control sessions twice yearly at the hospital’s gym,” Georgiou said.

“Moderate supervised ET performed twice weekly for 10 years maintains functional capacity of more than 60% of maximum Vo2 and confers a sustained improvement in quality of life compared with non-trained patients. These sustained improvements are associated with reduction in major cardiovascular events, including hospitalizations for CHF and cardiac mortality,” he added.

Chronic heart failure is the major clinical and public health problem in the world. It is estimated that 23 million people have CHF worldwide.