Hem 8723

At the beginning of the CR program, the patients underwent a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPX) using Cpex1 (Inter Riha, Tokyo, Japan) and a stress test system with an ML9000 electrocardiogram (Fukuda Denshi, Tokyo, Japan). The CR program was the same as in our previous report (5 (link)). In brief, the patients participated in a supervised exercise training program at the hospital's gym one to three times a week. The exercise workload was based on the anaerobic threshold (AT) according to the CPX results. Each session lasted 1 hour, beginning with a warm-up exercise for 5 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of cycling with an aero bike (75XLIII; Combi, Tokyo, Japan) or walking on a treadmill (TRD-350; Sakai Medical, Tokyo, Japan) at the patient's indicated exercise intensity and 25 minutes of cooling down and stretching. The blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) were measured at rest before and after exercise. The BP was measured after at least 1 minute of rest in the sitting position by an automated sphygmomanometer (HEM-8723; Omron Healthcare, Kyoto, Japan), and an electrocardiogram was obtained using a central monitor (DS-5700; Fukuda Denshi). The Borg rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was also recorded during exercise.

BP was determined using an automated sphygmomanometer (HEM-8723, Omron, Tokyo, Japan) after at least 5 min of rest. SBP and diastolic BP (DBP) measurements were obtained at every visit for CR for 12 months. We used the data from six clinic visits for each of the 12 months and determined VVV in both SBP and DBP and in HR expressed as a standard deviation (SD) of average SBP, average DBP and average HR.