Non-invasive ventilation on the exercise tolerance of patients with heart failure

Introduction: Heart failure (HF) is a clinical syndrome in which the heart has a decrease in blood pumping capacity, progressing to hemodynamic, metabolic and cardiovascular changes. According to the progression of HF, individuals present a decline in functional capacity (FC). FC being one of the objectives of rehabilitation. Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) has been reported as an effective strategy for increasing FC. Objective: To review the use of NIV on the FC of patients with HF. Methods: This is a systematic review using the PICO strategy, with a search performed in the PubMed, Central, PeDro, SciELO and LILACS databases, with the descriptors heart failure, non-invasive ventilation and exercise tolerance added by the Boolean operators " AND" and "OR". Results: Seventeen articles were found after reading the title and abstract, seven of which were chosen according to the inclusion criteria, based on the evaluation of 151 patients aged between 50 and 77 years, who showed that NIV can be an effective approach to increase the FC. NIV was effective in improving the distance covered in the 6-minute walk test by 26.16 meters (95% CI 9.26 to 43.06). Conclusion: NIV was effective in improving the FC of individuals with HF.