Relation of respiratory muscle strength, cachexia and survival in severe chronic heart failure

Respiratory muscle (RM) function predicts prognosis in non-cachectic patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). We hypothesized that weakness of RM (maximum inspiratory mouth occlusion pressure, Pimax) is a function of body mass index, and that outcome is more a function of BMI than of Pimax or ventilatory drive (P0.1).We enrolled 249 CHF patients (11.2 % female, median age 54.2 years) at the German Heart Institute Berlin. Patients were in NYHA...