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by
  • Mei Rosemary Fu 1,*,†,
  • Yuan Li 2,3,† and
  • Christopher Lee 4
  • et al.

Reviewer 1: Anonymous Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript of “The effects of exercise-based interventions on fluid overload symptoms in patients with heart failure: A systematic review and meta-analysis” by M.R. Fu and co-authors aims to summarize recent findings on the therapeutic effect of exercise-based interventions focusing on optimizing lymph flow in patients with heart failure (HF). The authors summarized data from 17 randomized controlled trials covering 1,086 participants and provided evidence indicating the positive effect of exercises in dyspnea relief, while the duration of the intervention also affected the effect of treatment. The manuscript is well-written and makes a significant contribution to the systematization of knowledge about the effectiveness of exercise-based interventions on fluid overload symptoms in patients with HF. The authors have cited a large number of research articles, a significant portion of which have been published over the last five years. The manuscript may be accepted for publication in its current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

In the present systematic review “The effects of exercise-based interventions on fluid overload symptoms in patients with heart failure: A systematic review and meta-analysis”, Mei Rosemary Fu and colleagues aimed to examine the effects of exercise-based interventions on fluid overload symptoms among patients with heart failure. So far, the authors concluded that exercise-based interventions can be considered as an effective nonpharmacological therapy for patients with heart failure to promote lymph flow and manage fluid overload symptoms. Moreover, exercise-based interventions seem to have very limited effect on fatigue. Then, more research should investigate the mechanism of fatigue related to heart failure and future studies with high methodological quality and comprehensive assessment of symptoms and objective measure of fluid overload are warranted.

Overall, I think that the manuscript is really well-written (within the scope of this journal), well-structured and the data are of high impact on a current topic of interest. I would like to congratulate the authors on their work.