Breathing Therapy for Patients in General Practice

University of Agder

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mind-Body Therapies

Treatments: Behavioral: Breathing excercizes

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06575920

UAgder

Details and patient eligibility

About

Medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS) capture conditions characterized by symptoms without corresponding objective findings, such as asthenia, low back pain, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic fatigue syndrome. In order to establish the grounds for a RCT. this pilot study aims to investigate the effectiveness and feasibility of a 5-week breathing retraining programme on patients who meet the criteria for MUPS.

Full description

Medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS) are symptoms without an identifiable organic cause that lead to functional impairment. MUPS is highly prevalent in general practice consultations. This pilot study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and feasibility of a 5-week breathing retraining program for patients meeting the criteria for MUPS. The study used a quantitative observational design with pre- and post-intervention measurements. Fifteen participants with MUPS and dysfunctional breathing (assessed by the Nijmegen Questionnaire) were recruited from two general practitioner offices. The intervention consisted of 5 weekly sessions including education on breathing physiology and weekly breathing exercises focused on nasal breathing and resonance breathing techniques. One week post intervention, improvements were observed in dysfunctional breathing scores, lower symptom severity, higher general well-being, and reduced musculoskeletal pain complaints. At 3 months post-intervention, sustained improvements were seen in dysfunctional breathing, general well-being, musculoskeletal pain, and additionally lower pseudoneurological, gastrointestinal, and allergy complaints, as well as lower overall symptom burden and improved end-tidal CO2 levels.

The study concluded that the 5-week breathing program showed promising results for improving multiple patient-reported outcomes in MUPS. Recruitment, adherence, and acceptability of the program were satisfactory. A randomized controlled trial is recommended to further evaluate the efficacy of this breathing intervention for MUPS patients.

Enrollment: 15 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 75 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• 18 years
• dysfunctional breathing,
• sufficient laguage skills to fill out forms

Exclusion criteria

• Participants with asthma
• Participants with,chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Participants with respiratory allergy that is not optimally treated medically.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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15 participants in 1 patient group

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Patients who met the inclusion criteria were asked by the GP if they wanted to participate in the study and, if accepted, their contact information was sent to the researchers (N=18). At the first session, the researcher informed participants of the content and duration of the intervention programme and collected signed informed consent from a total of 15 participants.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Breathing excercizes