A growing body of literature indicates that IE training is capable of producing BP reductions greater than that observed following the currently recommended exercise guidelines and similar to that of standard anti-hypertensive monotherapy [
22]. However, in hypertensive patients with underlying IHD, there is a substantial risk that IE can lead to a maladaptive acute response with abnormal rise of BP and excessive increase in myocardial oxygen consumption [
23,
24]. A preliminary assessment of the acute hemodynamic response to IE can help in order to identify the best tolerated isometric protocol for these patients. In the present study we investigated the acute hemodynamic response evoked by isometric knee extension performed at 30% of MVC in hypertensive patients with IHD and compared it with the response evoked by the same exercise in HC. We focused particularly on changes in myocardial work assessed non-invasively by speckle tracking echocardiography. We observed that the response of IHD patients was characterized by a significant increase in systolic and diastolic BP, a modest increase in HR and by an increase in inotropism indicated by a significant rise in GWI. However, the MW increase model was dysfunctional with a clear prevalence of GWW over GCW and a consequent significant reduction in GWE. The exercise-induced rise of GWW meant that the increased contractility did not translate into hemodynamically productive work; at the contrary, the significant increase of LV uncoordinated contractions determined a significant loss of myocardial cells energy, with a reduction of contraction efficiency at peak exercise [
25]. This LV inefficient contraction was associated with a decrease in SV at peak exercise. The decrease in SV, together with the inadequate increase in HR, was responsible for the lack of increase in CO at peak exercise registered in this group. Conversely in HC, at peak exercise there were not changes in GWI and GWE; the increase of CO was driven by a significant increase in HR and only modest changes in systolic and diastolic BP occurred in comparison to the rest condition. Interestingly, we found that in the IHD group resting values of GWI, GCW, and GWE were lower while GWW was higher compared to HC. These result are consistent with previous studies showing that MW indices are impaired in patients developing LV ischemic remodeling after myocardial infarction and in those undergoing coronary revascularization regardless of the presence of heart failure [
26,
27]. The resting reduction of GWE has been ascribed to a chronically impairment of energy metabolism that occurs in the remodeled myocardium [
28] and has been associated to a lower performance during exercise in athletes [
29]. We think that this research add new insight in the usefulness of measure MW indices for describing the acute hemodynamic response to IE in patients with IHD undergoing cardiac rehabilitation.
The inotropic activation that we documented in IHD, together with the significant increase in systolic BP, can be ascribed to the exercise-mediated activation of sympathetic nervous system (SNS). An abnormal activation of SNS leading to an increase in systemic vascular resistance and to an inotropic response has been widely described during IE [
30,
31]. However the involvement of SNS remains speculative in the present study since we did not measure catecholamine levels or other indices of SNS activation. The hemodynamic response to IE that we observed in IHD was also characterized by a blunted increase in HR that we attributed to chronotropic incompetence determined by the systematic use of betablockers. In experimental models, when subjects with normal LV function, and with HR fixed at rest values, performed IE, SV increased and compensated for the lack of a chronotropic response, allowing for CO to rise and to produce the pressor response [
32,
33]. In such conditions, Nobrega et al. [
33] demonstrated that a combination of increased contractility and the Frank-Starling mechanism were responsible for that increase in SV during IE. Conversely, in our study, in IHD patients SV at peak exercise decreased leaving us to hypothesize that, in pathologic conditions, these two mechanisms were not able to provide sufficient compensation. We found that in the IHD group LVEDV decreased at peak exercise compared to rest values: this would imply that Frank-Starling mechanism was not used by these patients. The decrease in LVDD denotes an impaired LV diastolic filling that may in part be related to the reduction in venous return arising from blood retention within the contracting muscles. Moreover an abnormal increase in LV filling pressures during IE may also have played a role in reducing LV filling. We observed that at peak exercise E/E’ ratio was higher and deceleration time was significantly shorter compared to rest values in the IHD group. Both of these finding suggest that IE was responsible for a significant increase in LV filling pressure in this group [
34]. These results were also mirrored at atrial level by the reduction of PALS values compared to rest, indicating an increased LA pressure[
35]. Taken together these data suggest the occurrence of LV diastolic dysfunction during the exercise phase in IHD. The significant corelation that we found between changes in GWW and changes in E/E’ ratio let us hypothesized that the rise in LV filling pressure further worsened the already impaired LV contractile efficiency. This result seems to comply with other recent studies. D’Andrea et al. [
18] showed that GWE at rest was closely related to maximal watts reached as well as to LV E/E’.
It should be noted that in the present study we documented a significant increase in BP in the IHD group while only modest changes in BP occurred in HC. Considering that in this research IE involved large muscle groups, a
considerable rise in BP during IE was an expected result; in fact it has been shown that IE performed with larger muscle masses elicit greater BP responses than those involving smaller muscles [
36]. However the probability to incur in an exaggerate BP rise is higher in hypertensive than in normotensive subjects [
37] and this could explain the different BP response that we observed in IHD and HC. The majority of studies investigating the effects of IE research has utilised a handgrip protocol, generally performed at 30% of the participant’s MVC. Results of our study match perfectly previous research, carried out using invasive hemodynamic monitoring, and in which two different
patterns of hemodynamic responses during IE have been described [
22,
38]: a first pattern, like that we encountered in HC, was characterized by a modest rise in systolic BP coupled with a rise in cardiac index, a significant increase in HR and no changes in systemic vascular resistance. A second pattern was instead characterized by a conspicuous rise in systolic BP, coupled with little or no change in cardiac index and by a small increase in HR. This latter pattern, that was close to that we described in IHD in the present study, has been typically observed in subjects with a certain degree of LV dysfunction, including hypertensive subjects with LV hypertrophy as well as in patients with IHD [
24,
39]. Limitations: the results of the present research have been obtained in a small group of subjects and further confirmations in larger studies are needed. The study tested the hemodynamic response to an isometric exercise that involved bilateral leg extension and a load corresponding to 30% of the MVC. Clearly we cannot rule out that IE involving different muscle groups or performed different intensities of IE could evoke a different myocardial response. For example, it has been demonstrated that BP increases are proportional to the amount of skeletal muscle that is contracting and that handgrip requires less BP increase than leg extension [
37]. In this study, a very small proportion of subjects inf both groups were females; therefore, we think that our results cannot be generalized to the female gender.