Exercise training in patients with chronic heart failure: More information is needed on outcomes in individual studies

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7441.711-a

BMJ 2004;328:711 (20 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7441.711-a

Letter

Exercise training in patients with chronic heart failure

More information is needed on outcomes in individual studies

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The ExTraMATCH collaborative has conducted a meta-analysisfor which there is a clear need.¹ The small size of studiesof exercise training for patients with heart failure means thatonly a meta-analysis can adequately address the question ofwhether exercise training reduces mortality. Having read theirreport, I am left wanting to know more.

Is the omission of outcome data for the individual studies intended?The number of deaths in the training and control groups wouldbe interesting for each study in turn. I have consulted thecited papers for each study, but the mortality data are notreported in several of them, or are reported for a shorter periodthan indicated in table 1 of the meta-analysis.

A forest plot of the hazard ratios (with 95% confidence intervals)would be interesting for the identified studies. Figure 2 ofthe meta-analysis shows that the exercise regimen in one . . . [Full text of this article]

-->

Chris Metcalfe, lecturer in medical statistics

Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2PR chris.metcalfe@bristol.ac.uk