The effects of a respiratory rehabilitation programme on body composition
Article Category: General Reviews
Published Online: Jul 27, 2020
Page range: 29 - 36
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/pneum-2020-0008
Keywords
© 2020 Daniela Jipa-Dună et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Objective
Analysis of the respiratory rehabilitation effects on body composition, performed for 10 patients with respiratory pathology.
Materials and method
In our pilot study were included patients with respiratory disease, for which bioelectrical impedance analysis was performed before and after an outpatient respiratory rehabilitation (RR) programme. The RR programme consisted of 20 sessions of exercise for lower limb (cycling and walking on a treadmill) and upper limb (weights).
Results
Ten patients followed the rehabilitation programme (five patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, two with bronchiectasis, one with cystic fibrosis, one with lung cancer and one with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis). Following the rehabilitation, they presented an important decrease in total body fat distribution (average total body fat distribution before RR – 31.38% and after RR – 27.09%, p = 0.000) and also segmental body fat distribution; we found an increase of total muscle mass after RR programme (average total muscle mass distribution before RR – 53.03 kg and after the RR – 56.84 kg, p = 0.000) and segmental muscle mass. The average body weight of the patients measured before and after the rehabilitation programme remained relatively constant in absolute value (81.8 kg and 81.3 kg after RR), probably by decreasing fat mass and increasing muscle mass. The RR programme had also a positive effect on increasing exercise tolerance (with 88.5 m at 6-min walk test) and dyspnoea improvement (decrease of mMRC scale with 1.5 points).
Conclusion
The RR programme has modified the body composition by increasing muscle mass and decreasing fat mass in the respiratory patients, with positive effects on symptoms and exercise tolerance.