BACKGROUND: Exercise testing plays an important role in evaluating heart failure prognosis and selecting patients for advanced therapeutic interventions. However, concern for SARS-CoV-2 transmission during exercise testing has markedly curtailed performance of exercise testing during the COVID-19 Pandemic. METHODS AND RESULTS: To examine the feasibility to conducting exercise testing with an in-line filter, two healthy volunteer subjects each completed two incremental exercise tests; one with discrete stages of increasing resistance and one with a continuous ramp. Each subject performed one test with an electrostatic filter in-line with the system measuring gas exchange and air flow, and one test without the filter in place. Oxygen uptake (VO(2)) and minute ventilation were highly consistent when evaluated with and without use of an electrostatic filter with a >99.9% viral efficiency. CONCLUSIONS: Deployment of a commercially available in-line electrostatic viral filter during cardiopulmonary exercise testing is feasible and provides consistent data compared to testing without a filter.
Feasibility and Consistency of Results with Deployment of an In-Line Filter for Exercise-Based Evaluations of Heart Failure Patients During the COVID-19 Pandemic