What is the clinical evidence from this study?

Study design: Cross-Sectional. Population: Healthy volunteers (n=22). Intervention: Long-term aerobic exercise (swimming) vs. No regular exercise (control). Primary outcome: Left ventricular stroke volume (LVSV) (p=0.040).

February 23, 2016Open Access

The effects of long-term aerobic exercise on cardiac structure, stroke volume of the left ventricle, and cardiac output

BLBo-Ae LeeDongguk University DODeuk-Ja OhDaegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology

Key Result

Long-term aerobic exercise significantly increased left ventricular stroke volume compared to controls (74.35 vs 58.39, p=0.040) and induced structural cardiac adaptations.

Study Design

Type

Cross-Sectional (n=22)

Multicenter

Structured PICO

Does long-term aerobic exercise alter cardiac structure, stroke volume, and cardiac output in healthy adults?

Population

22 healthy middle-aged volunteers, including 10 long-term swimmers and 12 controls, evaluated for differences in cardiac structure and function.

Exposure

Long-term aerobic exercise (swimming for ≥5 years, 4 times a week, 1 hour per session)

Comparator

No regular long-term aerobic exercise (control group)

Outcome

Cardiac structure (LVIDd, LVIDs, IVSd, LVPWd, LVEDV, LVM, LVM-index) and cardiac function (LVSV, LVCO, LVEF) measured by echocardiographysurrogate

Long-term aerobic exercise induces physiological structural cardiac adaptations and increases stroke volume without significantly changing resting cardiac output or ejection fraction.

Main Result

Absolute Event Rate: 74.35% vs 58.39%

p-value: p=0.040

Limitations

Small sample size
Cross-sectional design cannot establish causality
Need for follow-up studies to closely analyze the relationship between exercise and systolic/diastolic functions

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the long-term aerobic exercises on cardiac structure, left ventricular stroke volume, and cardiac output. To achieve the purpose of the study, a total of 22 volunteers-including 10 people who have continued regular exercises and 12 people as the control group-were selected as subjects. With regard to data processing, the IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 21.0 was used to calculate the mean and standard deviation, and the difference of the means between the groups was verified through an independent t-test. As a result, there were significant differences between groups in the left ventricular end-diastolic internal dimension, left ventricular end-systolic internal dimension, left ventricular end-diastolic septum thickness. There were significant differences between groups in left ventricular end-diastolic volume, left ventricular mass, and left ventricular mass index per body surface area. However, in cardiac function, only left ventricular stroke volume showed a significant difference between groups.

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