[Studies on evaluation of the oxygen transport system function with multistage treadmill stress testing: comparison...

The oxygen transport system (OTS) function was evaluated with multistage treadmill stress testing on 171 normal control subjects and 80 patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). After Bruce's definition, OTS function was expressed with functional aerobic impairment (FAI), left ventricular impairment (LVI) or myocardial aerobic impairment (MAI), heart rate impairment (HRI) or chronotropic reserve impairment (CRI) and peripheral circulatory impairment (PCI). All subjects were monitored on heart rate, blood pressure, electrocardiogram and endtidal O2 and CO2 before and every one minute during the symptom limited maximal stress testing. Seventy three of 80 coronary patients were subjected to the coronary arteriography and were classified into four groups; 31 with single vessel disease (SVD), 20 with double vessel disease (DVD), 15 with triple vessel disease (TVD) and 7 with A-C bypass surgery. Comparison between normal control subjects and the CHD patients with regard to the relation of age and VO2max derived from the linear regression analysis disclosed the identical age-related decrease in VO2max in both groups. The age corrected VO2max in the CHD patients, however, was 2.2 METS less than that of normal control subjects. Therefore, the level of VO2max in CHD patients was determined not only by disease, but also by ageing process itself. Comparisons among three CHD groups with regard to FAI, LVI, HRI and PCI clearly demonstrated different functional impairments paralleling to the severity of the disease process. On the other hand, the patients with A-C bypass surgery revealed almost identical functional impairment to the patients with SVD. In conclusion, these simple and noninvasive evaluations of the oxygen transport system could give us valuable informations reasonably differentiating the clinical status of the patients with CHD.