Hi Jonathan, it depends on how much time you consider to be useful for performing stress test upon IABP withdrawal. If the patient was not fully revascularized, you can stress him/her after 30 days to reconsider second coronary angio. If admission, and IABP positioning, occurred in the context of LV failure, you might want to wait more.

Dear Jonathan,

if you want to exercise patients on an IABP you should consider surgical placement via the axillary/subclavian artery in order to make your patient ambulatory.

There are a few reports regarding this technique, e.g.:

Ambulatory intraaortic balloon pump use as bridge to heart transplant.

Cochran RP, Starkey TD, Panos AL, Kunzelman KS.

Ann Thorac Surg. 2002 Sep;74(3):746-51; discussion 751-2

or

Percutaneous placement of an intra-aortic balloon pump in the left axillary/subclavian position provides safe, ambulatory long-term support as bridge to heart transplantation.

Estep JD, Cordero-Reyes AM, Bhimaraj A, Trachtenberg B, Khalil N, Loebe M, Bruckner B, Orrego CM, Bismuth J, Kleiman NS, Torre-Amione G.

JACC Heart Fail. 2013 Oct;1(5):382-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jchf.2013.06.002. Epub 2013 Sep 11

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,

I. Aleksic

We had a little (6 cases in 12 months) of Patients treated with IABP undergoing physical therapy. All patients were cannulated via axillary artery, none of those was intubate nor ventilated. We start with a "cyclette" time of 15'/day. Recruitment criteria: only IABP, no inotrope/vasopressor. The endpoints was:

- absence of arrhythmias;

- BP augmentation < 20% from baseline;

- FC augmentation < 30% from baseline.

At this moment we didn't register any kind of accident.

Bye

Article “Physiotherapy protocol to maintain mobility at patients wit...