Can exercise conditioning be effective in older heart failure patients?

Over the past two decades, considerable evidence has accrued that heart failure patients benefit from aerobic exercise training programs. Improvements in peak oxygen consumption and its components as well as increases in ventilatory threshold and submaximal endurance have been documented from such programs. Despite the fact that heart failure predominates among the elderly, very few training studies have included substantial numbers of older individuals, particularly older women. The limited data available suggests that older heart failure patients derive similar benefits from training as younger patients. A major challenge for the future is the inclusion of representative proportions of elderly individuals in heart failure training trials.