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Early mobilization after cardiac surgery induces a marked reduction in mixed venous oxygen saturation (Svo2). Using pulmonary artery catheters and indirect calorimetry, we investigated the effects of exercise and postural change on cardiac index (CI) and Svo2 before and on the first morning after coronary artery bypass surgery. Sixteen patients with an ejection fraction >0.50 were studied at rest, during supine bicycle exercise, and during passive standing. Supine cycling at 30 W increased CI by 1.5 ± 0.8 L · min1 · m2 before and 0.9 ± 0.7 L · min1 · m2 after surgery (P < 0.05), whereas Svo2 was reduced from 80% ± 4% at rest to 63 ± 6% preoperatively (P < 0.05) and from 71% ± 5% to 46% ± 11% postoperatively (P < 0.05). Passive standing reduced CI by 0.8 ± 0.5 L · min1 · m2 before and 0.3 ± 0.4 L · min1 · m2 after surgery (P < 0.05). Svo2 was reduced from 79% ± 5% to 64% ± 7% preoperatively (P < 0.05) and from 72% ± 6% to 60% ± 6% postoperatively (P < 0.05). The exercise challenge revealed an altered cardiovascular response after surgery, causing a larger reduction in Svo2 for the same workload. Passive standing significantly reduced Svo2 both days, but this effect was less pronounced after surgery. The response to postural change and exercise was altered after surgery and may both contribute to the reduction in Svo2 during postoperative mobilization.
There is growing evidence that active rehabilitation, including early mobilization, improved pain control, and early enteral nutrition, can reduce postoperative morbidity and mortality (1). The "fast track" approach with early tracheal extubation has facilitated early postoperative mobilization in cardiac surgery. Cardiac function is transiently impaired after cardiac surgery (2). The relevance regarding the cardiac surgical patients tolerance to early postoperative mobilization is, however, uncertain. Most studies on postoperative cardiovascular function are old; using treatment modalities not commonly used today. In addition, they all evaluated cardiac function at rest rather than during exercise, which is today considered routine after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) (35). In previous studies we found that mixed venous oxygen saturation (Svo2) was markedly reduced and that there was no compensatory increase in cardiac index (CI) during mobilization on the first and second days after cardiac surgery (6,7). Despite hemodynamic data indicating that myocardial function was postoperatively reduced, the Svo2 was unchanged and CI was increased after surgery (8). These apparent inconsistencies may depend on the complexity of the model. When a patient is mobilized out of bed, several changes occur simultaneously. The present study aims at elucidating the probable mechanisms involved. We investigated the effects of posture and low-level muscular work on CI and Svo2 separately, with special attention to the influence of cardiac surgery on these physiological responses. The specific aims were as follows: 1. To study the preoperative and postoperative response to graded supine bicycle exercise and passive standing in CABG patients.
2. To estimate the amount of muscle work involved in passive standing and hence its role in the reduction of Svo2 by comparing the increase in oxygen consumption (
The Regional Board of Ethics in Medical Research approved the study protocol. As exercise testing has not previously been performed this early after cardiac surgery, we included only male CABG patients with ejection fraction >50% (preoperative angiography) who were exercise tested to >100 W without ischemia, or who, if not tested, were in New York Heart Association class II. An anesthesiologist not involved in the measurements independently observed the electrocardiogram (ECG) and patient during exercise. Exclusion criteria were acute surgery, serious renal or lung dysfunction, arrhythmias, and New York Heart Association class IV. Patients were recruited after obtaining written informed consent.
The patients followed our standard regimen for CABG surgery. Medication, except aspirin, was continued up to surgery. All medication except angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors/AII blockers was resumed the first morning after surgery. Patients were monitored with standard 5-lead ECG, radial artery catheter, and reflectance oximetry pulmonary artery catheter (rPAC) continuously monitoring Svo2. Anesthesia was induced with diazepam, thiopental, fentanyl, and pancuronium and maintained with isoflurane and fentanyl. For cardioplegia, we used St. Thomas crystalloid solution. Extracorporeal circulation used a standard membrane oxygenator,
On the day of operation, before premedication, an Explorer TM rPAC (Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Irvine, CA) and an arterial catheter were placed using local anesthesia. After 15 min of recovery the patients were subjected to "standing" and supine "cycling" (Angio ergometer; Lode, Groningen, The Netherlands). The order of these procedures was randomized by the institutional clinical trials office and there was a 15-min rest between them. During cycling, baseline resting values were obtained with the legs fixed to the bicycle pedals and physiological responses were recorded during 10 and 30 W workload. During standing baseline values were obtained during supine rest and the physiological response to passive standing was recorded. At each step we used 2 min of stabilization before the measurements were made. A full hemodynamic profile was obtained including CI recorded as the mean value of three stable readings from 10-mL saline injection at room temperature. The MetaMax 3x apparatus was used with a 30% oxygen in air mixture both preoperatively and postoperatively. The pressure transducers were zeroed and positioned as previously described (6,7). The ECG was continuously observed for ST deviations or arrhythmias. Criteria for acute myocardial infarction were a persistent new q-wave in the ECG with creatine kinase subunit MB >50 µg/L after 20 h or troponin-T > 0.460 µg/L after 48 h (10). Derived physiological variables were calculated using standard formulae. Descriptive results are presented as mean with 95% confidence interval; mean ± standard deviation, or median with range, as appropriate. Each patient was measured under all conditions and thus served as his own control. Between-day differences were analyzed using repeated-measurements analysis of variance with paired Students t-tests as post hoc analyses. Within days measurements were subject to paired Students t-tests with Bonferroni correction. SPSS version 13 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL) was used.
To illustrate the dynamic aspects of the reaction to different workloads and posture, a linear mixed model (11) was fitted to Svo2, CI, heart rate (HR), stroke volume index (SVI),
We did not expect different preoperative and postoperative responses in CI and Svo2 to the change in posture. No data were available regarding the effect on Svo2 of supine exercise of 30 W. Based on previous observations of resting CI (8) and the fact that 30 W increases
Demographic and perioperative data are given in Table 1. Seven patients had hypertension, four had previous myocardial infarctions, and one had experienced a cerebrovascular event without sequelae. Fourteen patients received ß-adrenergic blockers as anti-anginal medication, three were receiving angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/AII blockers, and two received calcium channel blockers. The placement of invasive monitoring devices and preoperative baseline hemodynamic measurements were uneventful. No patient met the criteria for perioperative myocardial infarction. No patient received blood transfusions. All patients were in sinus rhythm and had adequate pain relief during preoperative and postoperative measurements. The postoperative studies were done in the morning 14.822.1 h after end of surgery (Table 1). One patient found cycling at 30 W for 4 min too strenuous after the operation and stopped after 10 W. All others completed all parts of the study. No signs of myocardial ischemia were observed during measurements in any of the patients.
Resting SVI remained unchanged after the operation but HR and thus CI were increased (Table 2). CI increased with increasing workloads on both days, mainly as the result of an increase in HR of approximately 1 beat/min per watt of workload. Unlike HR, CI and SVI increased less during postoperative exercise (Fig. 1A, B and C).
The central venous pressure (CVP) increased, whereas MAP and systemic vascular resistance index decreased from preoperative to postoperative rest. This may indicate increased preload and reduced afterload after surgery (Table 2). Bicycle exercise increased mean pulmonary artery pressure and pulmonary artery wedge pressure both preoperatively and postoperatively. The systemic vascular resistance index decreased with increasing workload both days. CVP did not change with exercise before but increased with increasing workload after the operation (Table 2). Before the operation, the right and left ventricular stroke work indexes (RVSWI and LVSWI) increased with increasing workloads, indicating an increase in bi-ventricular performance. After the operation no such increase was seen (Fig. 2).
The arterial oxygen content was reduced from 20 ± 1 mL/dL before to 14 ± 2 mL/dL after the operation (P < 0.05), mainly because of lower Hgb-values (Table 1) but resting
Resting arterial lactate was slightly higher after than before operation. No change was seen during preoperative exercise. Postoperatively lactate increased from 1.1 ± 0.3 mmol/L at rest to 2.2 ± 0.8 mmol/L at 30 W exercise (P = 0.001) (Table 2). The Borg score indicated that exercise was considered less strenuous before than after the operation (Table 2). The change from supine rest to passive standing increased HR (model estimate) by 7 bpm, with no difference between days. The modeled reduction in SVI with standing upright was 17 mL · m2 before and 9 mL · m2 after the operation (P = 0.000), with corresponding reductions in CI of 0.8 and 0.3 L · min1 · m2 (P = 0.001). Before the operation, the cardiac filling pressures (CVP and pulmonary artery wedge pressure) decreased and MAP increased with standing; after the operation pressures were stable (Table 3).
Preoperatively the reduction in CI when standing resulted in a significant reduction in
Continuous hemodynamic readings from the patient monitor and the rPAC Svo2 printouts confirmed that our measurements were obtained during relatively stable physiological conditions. The
The present study shows that the cardiovascular response to exercise is altered on the first morning after CABG. The hemodynamic data indicate that myocardial function may be reduced. Further, judged by the reductions in CI,
The patients had anemia after surgery, which reduced the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood and also reduced blood viscosity, contributing to changes in preload and afterload (15). As a result of the postoperative increase in HR, resting CI increased, maintaining
Increased Despite indications of increased preload and decreased afterload after the operation, SVI was unchanged at rest. This may indicate reduced cardiac function (Table 2). Roughly judged by the parallel increase in HR, the shifts in autonomic balance during exercise were similar before and after surgery (Table 2, Fig. 1B). Further, the similarity of changes in filling pressures and vascular resistance with increasing workload indicate similar alterations in cardiac preload and afterload during exercise on both days (Table 2). The smaller increase in SVI with postoperative exercise may therefore indicate reduced myocardial function (Fig. 1C), illustrated by the plots of right and left ventricular stroke work indexes against the respective filling pressures (Fig. 2). It has been reported that resting arterial lactate is slightly increased after uncomplicated cardiac surgery (17). Whereas low to moderate intensity exercise did not increase lactate before surgery, it significantly increased lactate postoperatively. This phenomenon has not been described previously. However, the study was not designed to investigate lactate metabolism; thus explanations will at this point be speculative. Other studies have led to the opinion that the myocardial dysfunction after cardiac surgery is transient, in most cases reversed on the first morning after surgery (35). The exercise testing revealed indications that the postoperative myocardial dysfunction may be of longer duration than previously assumed. Echocardiographic studies have indicated that right ventricular dysfunction may last for months after cardiac surgery (18,19). The clinical significance of these findings regarding global cardiac function is, however, uncertain (20). Standing up reduced the filling pressures before the operation. This suggests that reduced venous return is an important factor for the reductions in CI and Svo2 when the patients were standing. Invasive data were published confirming reduced CI and Svo2 during passive head-up tilt in normal subjects (21). However, we observed no changes in filling pressures with passive standing after the operation. This may depend on alterations in intravascular volumes, blood viscosity (15), or cardiovascular reactivity.
Passive standing demands muscular work. One may estimate the amount of this work by dividing the increase in
Reduced Svo2 values at rest during the first hours after cardiac surgery have been correlated with a negative outcome (22,23). The Svo2 is inversely correlated to oxygen extraction and its level during exercise might represent the adequacy of the cardiovascular response to the muscular activity. Thus the determination of a "critical value" of Svo2 (i.e., the level at which anaerobic metabolism occurs) during postoperative exercise could be of clinical interest. However, there are very few data on the relations between oxygen extraction reserve and Svo2. From data given in a paper on the Everest II study (24), we calculated that a mean oxygen extraction rate of >82% (i.e., Svo2 <18%) occurred at maximal exercise in young, fit men. In a study on sedentary hypertensive men, the mean Svo2 at maximal exercise was 35% with an individual range from 20%50% (25). Our aim for testing was to map the physiological changes corresponding to mobilization of postoperative cardiac surgery patients. We therefore did not test our patients at maximal exercise. The Borg score indicated that 30 W corresponded to 60%70% of our patients maximal capacity (9). The finding of a mean Svo2 of 46% during exercise might support this. Combining There are several limitations to the present study. The number of patients included is too small to draw definite conclusions regarding clinical implications of our findings. The workload during the supine bicycle exercise was very moderate. The study group had a relatively good preoperative exercise capacity and was slightly younger than our CABG patient population (for the year 2004, median age was 66.8 years; range, 38-85 years). Compared with previous results from CABG patients the level of Svo2 was higher whereas Hgb and CI were similar in the present study (7). Our results are therefore not directly applicable to all groups of cardiac surgical patients or higher workloads. Figures 1 and 3 illustrate the main aspects of response to bicycle exercise but extrapolation beyond the measurements is not justified. A more precise description would require measurements at more than two levels of workload. Further, more precise estimates of the effect of posture per se might have been obtained through a full factorial model that would require measurements during upright bicycle exercise. However, another exercise period on the first postoperative morning was not considered appropriate.
In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the activity-induced increase in CI and The authors are grateful to the ICU nursing staff for their enthusiastic help.
Supported, in part, by the Department of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia and Intensive care, St. Olav University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Presented, in part, at the EACTA 2005 conference in Montpelier, France, June 14 2005 and at the SSAI conference in Reykjavík, Iceland June 29July 1, 2005. Accepted for publication February 17, 2006.
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