In our study, we showed that upper limb muscle strength correlated with exercise capacity, QoL, dyspnea sensation. Identifying patients who have greater reductions in strength will allow early interventions with a multidisciplinary manner.

This study showed that comprehensive multidisciplinary PR was associated with a decreased number of emergency admissions and hospitalizations for asthma exacerbations in 1 year, and improvements of dyspnea sensation, quality of life, exercise capacity, and psychosocial status in overweight and obese patients.

Identifying the nutritional status and determining any requirement for nutritional supplement is an important component of comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation programme. SGA is an easy and practical method to assess nutritional status in pulmonary rehabilitation candidate patients with stable COPD.

Purpose: Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is advocated in the pre- and post–lung transplantation (LTx) periods. However, there is limited literature on the benefit of PR post-LTx. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of an outpatient, multidisciplinary, comprehensive PR program in bilateral LTx recipients in the early period after LTx. Method: Twenty-three LTx recipients were referred to the PR center. Change in incremental and endurance shuttle walk tests, hand and quadriceps strength, respiratory muscle strength (maximum inspiratory/expiratory pressure), dyspnea (Medical Research Council score), quality of life (St George's Respiratory Questionnaire, Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire), and psychological status (Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale) were compared pre- and post-PR. Results: Seventeen of 23 (74%) recipients completed PR, comprising 15 male and 2 female patients whose median age was 51 yr. The initiation of the program was 75 ± 15 d after LTx. The incremental shuttle walk test distance was predicted as 23% before PR and it increased to 36% after PR (P < .001); the endurance shuttle walk test distance also increased (P < .01). Significant improvement was seen in upper and lower extremity strength, and St George's Respiratory Questionnaire and Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire scores and Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale scores reflected less anxiety and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, body mass and fat-free mass indices, maximum inspiratory pressure, and maximum expiratory pressure improved significantly. There was no significant change in forced expiratory volume in the first second of expiration, forced vital capacity, or Medical Research Council scores. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that patients who attended PR within 3 mo of bilateral LTx showed improvements in exercise capacity, respiratory muscle strength, quality of life, body composition, and psychological status.

The increase in exercise capacity is less important when NMES is used as an adjunct to the cPR.

Background and objective: The role of non-invasive ventilation (NIV) during exercise training (ET) in patients with chronic respiratory failure (CRF) is still unclear. The aim of this study was to test whether NIV during ET had an additional effect in increasing the 6-min walking distance (6MWD) and cycle endurance time compared with ET alone. Methods: All patients underwent 20 sessions of cycle training over 3 weeks and were randomly assigned to ET with NIV or ET alone. Outcome measures were 6MWD (primary outcome), incremental and endurance cycle ergometer exercise time, respiratory muscle function, quality of life by the Maugeri Respiratory Failure questionnaire (MRF-28), dyspnoea (Medical Research Council scale) and leg fatigue at rest. Results: Forty-two patients completed the study. Following training, no significant difference in 6MWD changes were found between groups. Improvement in endurance time was significantly greater in the NIV group compared with the non-NIV training group (754 AE 973 vs 51 AE 406 s, P = 0.0271); dyspnoea improved in both groups, while respiratory muscle function and leg fatigue improved only in the NIV ET group. MRF-28 improved only in the group training without NIV. Conclusion: In CRF patients on long-term NIV and long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT), the addition of NIV to ET sessions resulted in an improvement in endurance time, but not in 6MWD.

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BackgroundThere are limited number of studies that investigate clinical variables instead of chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) management according to Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) 2017 classification. The aim of the study was to investigate whether there was a difference between GOLD 2017 classification and spirometric stage in clinical variables in patients with COPD. The data of 427 male patients with stable COPD were investigated retrospectively.MethodsPatients were allocated into combined assessment of GOLD 2017 and spirometric stage. Age, amount of smoking, pulmonary function, modified Medical Research Council (mMRC), incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT), Hospital Anxiety-Depression Scale (HADS), St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ), body mass index (BMI), and fat free mass index (FFMI) were recorded.ResultsSeventy-three (17%) patients were in group A, 103 (24%) constituted group B, 38 (9%) were included in group C, and 213 (50%) comprised group D according to the combined assessment of GOLD 2017. Twenty-three patients (5%) were in stage 1, 95 (22%) were in stage 2, 149 (35%) were in stage 3, and 160 (38%) were in stage 4 according to spirometric stage. According to GOLD 2017, age, amount of smoking, mMRC, BMI, FFMI, SGRQ, HADS, forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), and ISWT were significantly different between groups. Ages, amount of smoking, FFMI, BMI, HADS of group A were different from B and D. Smiliar values of FEV1 were found in A–C and B–D. A and C had smiliar ISWT. According to spirometric stage, BMI, FFMI of stage 4 were statistically different. mMRC, ISWT, and SGRQ of stages 3 and 4 were different from other stages, amongst themselves. FEV1 was correlated with mMRC, SGRQ, anxiety scores, BMI, FFMI, and ISWT.ConclusionThis study showed that the GOLD ABCD classification might not represent the severity of COPD sufficiently well in terms of lung function or exercise capacity. The combination of both spirometric stage and combined assessment of GOLD 2017 is important, especially for estimating clinical variables.