Risk factors, quality of life and six minute walk test in heart failure

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a complex syndrome with multiple risk factors involved in its genesis, making its prevention and management difficult to achieve. Objective: To evaluate the characteristics of patients with HF as risk factors and comorbidities, and whether these factors are related to the distance walked in the six-minute walk test (6MWT) and quality of life (QOL) by the questionnaires, SF-36 and Minnesota (MLHFQ). Methods: Were studied 17 patients (10 men and 7 women) diagnosed with HF FC I-II (NYHA), with a mean age of 55 ± 13 years, and the main etiology was chagasic cardiomyopathy (41.17%). The risk factors were investigated in medical records, followed by two 6MWT with a 30-minute interval between them; the SF-36 and MLHFQ were applied. For statistical analysis were used Shapiro-Wilk, Two way variance analysis and Tukey’s post hoc or nonparametric variance and post hoc; Student's t test and Pearson’s correlation. Results: Arterial hypertension and physical inactivity (76.47%), history of smoking (70.58%), dyslipidemia (47.05%) and diabetes (23.52%) were the main risk factors; 47.05% showed 3-4 comorbidities per subject. The analysis of distance (d) related to age (p=0.13) and body mass index (p=0.87) showed no significant difference. By correlating the SF-36 with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), the highlight was for physical aspect (rd=-0.38, p=0.12; rLVEF=0.43, p=0.08) and emotional (rd=-0.36, p=0.15; rLVEF=0.37, p=0.14). Conclusions: The 6MWT showed a weak correlation with the risk factors and QOL in this group with HF (NYHA I-II), although it was possible to find high occurrence of multiple risk factors in this population, indicating the need for action to reduce their worsen.