Effects of Breathing Retraining in Patients With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

University Hospital Essen

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 1

Conditions: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Treatments: Other: respiratory biofeedback

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01175265

FDAAA

Details and patient eligibility

About

Conventional pulmonary rehabilitation programs improve exercise tolerance, peripheral muscle strength, and health related quality of live but not pulmonary function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The role of breathing retraining techniques in the rehabilitation of patients with COPD remains unclear. The hypothesis to be tested in this study is that pulmonary function, cardio-pulmonary exercise capacity, health related quality of life and cardiac autonomic modulation of patients with COPD who undergo pulmonary rehabilitation plus breathing retraining will be better than that of patients undergoing a conventional pulmonary rehabilitation.

Full description

To address this uncertainty, we performed a randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of a 4-week rehabilitation program including breathing retraining on pulmonary function (PFT), cardio-pulmonary exercise capacity (CPET), health related quality of life (HRQL) and cardiac autonomic modulation (CAM).

A randomized controlled trial comparing the effects of a conventional 4-week pulmonary rehabilitation program with those of a 4-week pulmonary rehabilitation program plus breathing retraining on pulmonary function (FEV1), cardiopulmonary exercise capacity (6-minute walking distance, 6MWD), health related quality of life (chronic respiratory questionnaire, CRQ) and cardiac autonomic function (rMSSD) was performed.

Enrollment: 40 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 40 to 85 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Clinically stable patients with COPD (GOLD-classification I-IV)

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with clinical signs of COPD exacerbation
• Cardiac arrhythmia
• Coronary artery disease
• Primary pulmonary vascular disease
• Oxygen desaturation to less than 80% during exercise on room air

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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40 participants in 2 patient groups

pulmonary rehabilitation, no breathing retraining

No Intervention group

Description:

Forty COPD patients (23 females) with a mean (SD) age of 66.0 (6.3) years and a FEV1 of 47.1 (18.9) % predicted were randomized to conventional pulmonary rehabilitation (n=20) and conventional pulmonary rehabilitation plus breathing retraining (n=20).

breathing retraining

No Intervention group

Description:

Forty COPD patients (23 females) with a mean (SD) age of 66.0 (6.3) years and a FEV1 of 47.1 (18.9) % predicted were randomized to conventional pulmonary rehabilitation (n=20) and conventional pulmonary rehabilitation plus breathing retraining (n=20).

Treatment:

Other: respiratory biofeedback