A Structured Review of Outcome Measures Post Aerobic Training for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Patients

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the benefits of aerobic training program for patients with COPD in combina-tion with pharmacological treatment through investigation of outcome measures for these patients. Thirty COPD patients with age 50 years old, participated in this study. They were clinically stable COPD, on optimized medical treatment all over the study, patients were randomly divided into two groups of 15 patients for each, study and control group. Patients of study group received hospital-based supervised aerobic training program in addition to medical treatment, while patients of control group received optimized medical treatment only. The exercise program was conducted three times/week for successive 6-8 weeks for the study group patients. Assessment included: Body mass index (BMI), pulmonary function test, modified medical research council (MMRC), six minute walk test (6-MWT), and BODE index were conducted at the starting and at the end of study. Comparing the baseline data with data after treatments, the results showed that: Within the control group, there was a statistically significant improvement in 6-m.w. distance with an increase of 15 meters with non statistically significant difference in Mean±SD of BMI or siprometric parameters. While within the study group, there was a statistically significant improvement in 6- m w. Distance with an increase of 78 meters and also a significant increase difference in Mean±SD of FVC% and FEV 1/FVC as (85.87±17 vs 73.4±20% and 46.27±12.3 vs 49.2±12.7) with significant improvement in BODE score with greater number of patients who improved within the study group. The present study concluded that short term aerobic training program has the capacity to break the vicious circle of dyspnea, increasing inactivity and exercise intolerance and improve some components of bode index supporting the use of this multi dimensional index to evaluate the effect of training program for COPD patients.