[Comparison of 14-day rehabilitation and oxygen therapy on exercise tolerance and percutaneous oxygen saturation in...

Whether rehabilitation may be as beneficial as oxygen therapy (T) in the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is still not known. The aim of the was to compare the effects of T or R on exercise tolerance (ET) and percutaneous oxygen saturation (SO2) at rest and at the peak exercise in 21 patients with COPD (FEV1, 1.29 L +/- 0.5) Eleven patients with COPD were treated with oxygen (17 hour per day) for 14 days and 10 patients were rehabilitated. Both groups did not differ in age 63.7 vs 69.3 years, in the baseline values of FEV1, PaCO2 and PaO2 and resting SO2%. Before the study patients R and T had similar resting SO2 values and ET (4.5 +/- 1 vs 3.4 +/- 2 METs, p = NS), but those in the R group revealed higher drop in SO2 at peak exercise test (10.9 vs 3.4%, p = 0.007).

We found no significance impact of 14- day R and 14- day T on results of exercise test and exercise pulse oximetry in studied patients. However, rehabilitated patients, as opposite to patients on oxygen therapy had tendency to increase number of Mets and to diminish maximal drop in pulse oximetry during exercise. As a result, when we compared group R i T after study patients of R group differed from T patients with number of METs achieved (4.6 vs 3.0, p = 0.02), whereas maximal drop in SO2 at the peak exercise test in R and T patients equalized (7.9 +/- 7 vs 3.2 +/- 3%, p = NS). We conclude that the results of our short term study may suggest better effects of rehabilitation than oxygen therapy on exercise tolerance and oxygen saturation during exercise in COPD patients and justify further studies.