Abstract
Objective
To determine the safety and feasibility of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES)
from postoperative days (PODs) 1 to 5 after cardiovascular surgery.
Design
Pre-post interventional study.
Setting
Surgical intensive care unit and thoracic surgical ward of a university hospital.
Participants
Consecutive patients (N=144) who underwent cardiovascular surgery were included. Patients
with peripheral arterial disease, psychiatric disease, neuromuscular disease, and
dementia were excluded. Patients with severe chronic renal failure and those who required
prolonged mechanical ventilation after surgery were also excluded because of the possibility
of affecting the outcome of a future controlled study.
Interventions
NMES to the lower extremities was implemented from PODs 1 to 5.
Main Outcome Measures
Feasibility outcomes included compliance, the number of the patients who had changes
in systolic blood pressure (BP) >20mmHg or an increase in heart rate >20 beats/min
during NMES, and the incidence of temporary pacemaker malfunction or postoperative
cardiac arrhythmias.
Results
Sixty-eight of 105 eligible patients participated in this study. Sixty-one (89.7%)
of them completed NMES sessions. We found no patients who had excessive changes in
systolic blood pressure, increased heart rate, or pacemaker malfunction during NMES.
Incidence of atrial fibrillation during the study period was 26.9% (7/26) for coronary
artery bypass surgery, 18.2% (4/22) for valvular surgery, and 20.0% (4/20) for combined
or aortic surgery. No sustained ventricular arrhythmia or ventricular fibrillation
was observed.
Conclusions
The results of this study demonstrate that NMES can be safely implemented even in
patients immediately after cardiovascular surgery.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
AF (atrial fibrillation), MVC (maximal voluntary contraction), NMES (neuromuscular electrical stimulation), POD (postoperative day)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 10, 2014
Footnotes
Supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (grant no. 22300186).
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
