Association of objectively measured daily physical activity and health utility to disease severity in chronic heart failure patients: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Physical activity (PA) levels are related to mortality and morbidity in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). Health utility (HU), a very important cost-effectiveness analysis for health care and health status, is measured by several preference-based utility measures. This study aimed to evaluate the relation between PA and HU and the effect of disease severity on PA and HU in patients with CHF.

METHODS

We enrolled 226 consecutive outpatients with CHF (mean age, 57.5 years; males, 79.6%) in this retrospective cross-sectional study. Patients were divided into three groups by NYHA class for classification of disease severity. Patient characteristics, average step count in steps/day, PA energy expenditure (PAEE) in kcal/day for 7 days as assessed by accelerometer, and HU assessed by Short Form-6D were compared between the groups.

RESULTS

Average step count ( = 0.37,  < 0.01) and average PAEE ( = 0.36,  < 0.01) correlated positively with HU in all patients. Patients were classified into three groups by NYHA class: class I ( = 92), class II ( = 97), and class III ( = 37). Average step counts (7618.58, 6452.51, and 4225.63 steps/day,  < 0.001), average PAEE (244.65, 176.88, and 103.72 kcal/day,  < 0.001), and HU (0.68, 0.63, and 0.57,  < 0.001) respectively decreased with the increase in NYHA class ( < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

This study showed a significant relationship of daily PA and HU to disease severity in patients with CHF. Although causation cannot be determined from this study, these results suggest that PA and HU may provide important information related to the severity of disease in patients with CHF.