Respiratory medicine
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Respiratory medicine · Feb 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialContrasting breathing retraining and helium-oxygen during pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD: a randomized clinical trial.
Breathing-retraining and helium-oxygen (heliox) have been used to improve exercise tolerance in COPD. We hypothesized that, in patients with COPD, exercise duration after exercise-training plus breathing-retraining and oxygen would be longer than after exercise-training plus heliox or after exercise-training plus oxygen alone. We also explored the short-term maintenance of gains in exercise duration after using each technique. ⋯ In moderate-to-severe COPD, exercise-training combined with either heliox or with breathing-retraining yielded not significantly different improvements in exercise duration - with only the latter being superior to exercise-training. Six-weeks after training, these improvements were still greater after exercise-training plus breathing-retraining than after exercise-training.