1Lecturer, St. Mary's College of Nursing, Lucknow
2Principal cum Professor & HOD, Medical Surgical Nursing, Krupanidhi College of Nursing, Bangalore
Acute exacerbation of COPD or asthma leads to many hospital admissions every year. Eventhough the pathogenesis of these diseases differs, in both these cases the cardinal manifestation increases the airway obstruction which results in decreased PEFR and dyspnea. Breathing exercise could create positive impact on the respiratory health of such patients and would improve the potential gravity of the situation when appropriately used as interventions.
The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of Breathing Exercise on Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR) and Dyspnea among Patients with Respiratory Problems in a Selected Hospital, Bangalore.
A quasi experimental, pretest and posttest design with a control group was used for the study. Purposive sampling was used to select a sample of 60 patients with respiratory problems in the age group of 45 to 60 years admitted and receiving treatment in Agadi Hospital and randomly assigned 30 each into experimental and control group. Baseline Proforma, Mini-wright peak flow meter and Dyspnea scale were used to obtain the data from the subjects. Pretest was carried out for assessing the PEFR and dyspnea in experimental and the control group. Breathing exercise was taught for 20 minutes; thrice daily for 3 days, in the experimental group and then posttest PEFR and dyspnea was measured at the end of each day, whereas no intervention was given in the control group and only posttest was measured at the end of each day. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The analysis of data revealed that the breathing exercise was effective in improving the PEFR of subjects in the experimental group as the unpaired ‘t’ test showed a significant difference between the post test mean PEFR score of subjects in the experimental and control group on the 3rd day (t(58)=2.04; p< 0.05).The findings also revealed that breathing exercise was effective in reducing the dyspnea of the subjects in the experimental group as the paired ‘t’ test showed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest dyspnea score of subjects in the experimental group on the 1st 2nd and 3rd day (t(29)=5.8, 13.17, 12.14 respectively; p<0.05). There was significant association between pretest PEFR scores with selected demographic variables such as gender (χ2=15.88) and height (χ2=13.09) in the experimental group. It was also observed that, no significant association was found between pretest dyspnea scores with selected demographic variables of subjects in the experimental and control group.
Overall findings has shown that breathing exercise was effective in improving PEFR and reducing dyspnea of the patients with respiratory problems.
Breathing exercise, PEFR, dyspnea, respiratory problems
