title: Causes of exercise intolerance in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction: searching for consensus.
abstract: Exercise intolerance is one of the cardinal symptoms of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). We review its mechanistic basis using evidence from exercise studies. One barrier to a consensus understanding of the pathophysiology is heterogeneity of the patient population. Therefore, we pay special attention to varying study definitions of the disease and their possible impact on the causal factors that are implicated. We then discuss the role of exercise testing and its potential to subtype HFpEF in to more homogeneous mechanism-based subclasses.
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Division, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Nicholas E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Houstis
authors.affiliation: Cardiology Division, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: glewis@partners.org.
authors.forename: Gregory D
authors.initials: GD
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D005080:Exercise Test; D017079:Exercise Tolerance; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D012016:Reference Values; D013318:Stroke Volume
keywords: Exercise testing; Fick; VO(2)max; diagnostic criteria