Fig 1.
Type and severity of heart disease.
Left: Prevalence of heart disease leading to end stage heart failure (HF), separately for patients surgically treated with LVAD implant or Heart Transplantation (HTx). DCM = Dilated Cardiomyopathy; CHD = post-ischemic Cardiomyopathy; VCM = Valvular Cardiomyopathy; PCCM = Postchemotherapy Cardiomyopathy; HCM-ACM = Hypertrophic or Arrythmogenic Cardiomyopathy; LVAD and HTx distributions differ significantly (p<0.001, Chi-square test); the ** indicates differences between groups significant at p<0.01 (Fisher’s exact test). Right: severity of heart disease expressed as INTERMACS score; distributions do not differ between groups (p = 0.24,Chi square test).
Table 1.
General characteristics and prevalence of nutritional risk factors in LVAD implanted and HTx patients, with significance p of the difference between groups.
Table 2.
Baseline characteristics by sex of patients in LVAD implanted and HTx groups, as mean (SD).
Fig 2.
Nutritional status in LVAD implanted and HTx patients, at admission (T1) and end of rehabilitation (T2).
Upper panels: distributions of Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) scores: distributions do not differ significantly between HTx and LVAD groups neither at T1 nor at T2 (p = 0.11 and = 0.17 respectively, after Chi-square test). Lower panels: prevalence of each class of Weight-to-Height ratio (WHtR); distributions differed significantly between HTx and LVAD groups both at T1 and at T2 (p<0.001 after Chi-square test); the * and ** indicate differences between groups for a given WHtR class significant at p<0.05 and p<0.01 (Fisher’s exact test).
Fig 3.
Oxygen saturation at rest (upper panels) and distance walked in 6 minutes (lower panels) in LVAD implanted and HTx patients, at admission (T1) and end of rehabilitation (T2).
Values as median and quartiles. The ** indicates differences between groups significant at p<0.01 (Mann Whitney U test).
Table 3.
Changes between T2 and T1 as mean (SD), in the whole group and separately in LVAD and HTx patients.