JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

COVID-19 pandemic forced several European governments to impose severe lockdown. The reduction of physical activity during the lockdown could have been deleterious.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of lockdown strategy on the physical activity burden and subsequent reassessment in a group of heart failure patients followed by means of remote monitoring.

Methods:

We analyzed remote monitoring transmissions during the 3 months immediately preceding the lockdown, the 69 days of lockdown and the 3 months after the first lockdown. We compared variation of physical activity with clinical variables collected in hospital database.

Results:

We enrolled 41 heart failure patients that sent 176 transmission. Physical activity decreased during the lockdown period (3.4±1.9 vs 2.9±1.8 hours/day; p < 0.001) but no significant difference was found comparing the period preceding and following the lockdown (-0.0007 hours/day; p=0.99). There was a significant correlation between physical activity reduction during and after lockdown (R2 0.45; p < 0.001): Hypertensive patients had a higher reduction in daily exercise during the lockdown (-26 ± 24 % vs -6 ± 20%; p=0.03), while a larger post-lockdown reduction of exercise was observed in presence of hypertension, atrial fibrillation and low levels of hemoglobin. The only significant predictor of exercise variation in the post-lockdown period was the lockdown to pre-lockdown physical activity ratio.

Conclusions:

An excessive reduction of exercise in heart failure patients decreased the tolerance to exercise, moreover in patients with more comorbidity. Remote monitoring show exercise reduction and maybe could be used to encourage patients to maintain usual physical activity level.