Effect of 4 week expiratory muscle strengthening on exercise induced breathlessness in normal adults-a pilot study

Description

Background: During exercising, the expiratory phase plays an equally important role in improving the endurance as it helps in reducing the exercise-induced breathlessness, therefore this study aims at specifically strengthening the expiratory muscles so as to study the effect of expiratory muscle strengthening on exercise-induced breathlessness
Aims and objectives: To evaluate the effect of 4 weeks of expiratory muscle strengthening on exercise-induced breathlessness in normal individuals.
Methodology: The clearance from the ethical committee was obtained. Subjects were then screened on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria . 13 Eligible subjects were then enrolled for the study. Written consent was obtained from the subjects before conducting the study. A pilot study was carried out on a total of 13 subjects ranging in the  age group of 20-35yrs, where pre-intervention the Maximum Expiratory Pressure(MEP) and 1.5mile walk distance was calculated after which the subjects underwent a 4 week intervention protocol using Expiratory Muscle Strength Trainer 150 ( EMST-150) where the subjects performed 25 training breaths in one session where there were a total of 5 sessions in a day, 5days/week for a total of 4 weeks. Post the intervention the MEP and 1.5mile walk values were recalculated and compared to check for the difference.
Result: A total of 13  patients were analyzed for outcome MEP and 1.5mile walk test. Data were analyzed in terms of the mean difference. Statistically significant change was seen in the MEP and 1.5 mile walk test values post-intervention, i.e at the end of 4 weeks, where the values obtained were, MEP : pre – 77.537 ±13.67 and post ­­– 88.063 ±18.39 with a p-value of 0.0019 , 1.5 mile walk(vo2max.) : pre – 35.810 ±14.56 and post – 39.810 ±11.8 with a p-value of 0.0038 and RPE: pre – 3.80 ±0.5 and post – 1.7 ±0.5 with a p-value of 0.0057 , thereby proving a statically significant improvement in the outcome measures.
Conclusion: The study concludes that Expiratory muscle strengthening improves the maximum expiratory strength thereby reducing the exercise-induced breathlessness leading to an improvement in the endurance level.