title: Disability in COPD and Chronic Heart Failure Is the Skeletal Muscle the Final Common Pathway?
abstract: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Chronic Heart Failure (CHF), two major causes of worldwide morbidity and mortality have important systemic components, affecting additional tissues, other than the lung or the heart, such as the skeletal muscle. Muscle function (or dysfunction) may not only influence the symptoms that limit exercise, but may contribute directly to the poor exercise performance, health status and increased healthcare utilization.The present review tries to summarize the muscular abnormalities in COPD and CHF and the mechanisms underlying these alterations, which are strikingly similar, despite the obvious differences concerning the primary impairment in these two chronic diseases.The muscles therefore represent a potential site to improve patients' functioning level and quality of life of COPD and CHF. Only one practical therapeutic intervention currently exists that can reverse some of the muscle abnormalities observed in COPD and CHF, namely exercise training, which becomes nowadays the "cornerstone" of the whole rehabilitation.
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Luminita
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dumitru
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Alina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Iliescu
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Horatiu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dinu
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Ruxandra
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Badea
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Savulescu
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Cardiology, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huidu
authors.affiliation: Elias Emergency University Hospital, Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Mihai
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berteanu
keywords: chronic Heart Failure; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; disability; rehabilitation; skeletal muscle