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Updated: Aug 29, 2025
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Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment as a Useful Adjunctive Tool for Pneumonia
Published on: May 6, 2014
48.2K
Chest physiotherapy for pneumonia in adults
Xiaomei Chen1, Jiaojiao Jiang2, Renjie Wang2
1Department of Dermatology & Venereology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
|September 6, 2022
Summary
Chest physiotherapy shows uncertain effects on pneumonia mortality and cure rates in adults. While some methods may slightly reduce hospital stay and fever duration, evidence remains very low certainty and requires further validation.
Area of Science:
- Pulmonology
- Critical Care Medicine
- Evidence-Based Medicine
Background:
- Chest physiotherapy is a common adjunctive treatment for adult pneumonia, despite conflicting evidence regarding its efficacy.
- This review is an update of a previous Cochrane review first published in 2010 and updated in 2013.
Purpose of the Study:
- To systematically assess the effectiveness and safety of various chest physiotherapy techniques for treating pneumonia in adults.
- To synthesize evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs.
Main Methods:
- Updated systematic literature search across multiple databases (CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, PEDro, CINAHL, CBM) up to May 2022.
- Inclusion of RCTs and quasi-RCTs evaluating chest physiotherapy for adult pneumonia.
- Assessment of risk of bias and data synthesis using standard Cochrane methodology.
Main Results:
- Eight RCTs (974 participants) were included, evaluating conventional chest physiotherapy, osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), active cycle of breathing techniques, positive expiratory pressure, and high-frequency chest wall oscillation.
- Evidence for all interventions showed very low certainty regarding effects on mortality and cure rates.
- Some techniques, like positive expiratory pressure, may slightly reduce hospital stay and fever duration, while high-frequency chest wall oscillation may reduce ICU stay and mechanical ventilation duration, but with very low certainty.
Conclusions:
- The updated review found that current evidence is highly uncertain regarding the benefits of chest physiotherapy for adult pneumonia mortality and cure rates.
- While some potential benefits in reducing hospital stay, fever duration, and ICU/mechanical ventilation time were observed, these findings are based on very low certainty evidence.
- Further high-quality research is needed to validate these potential benefits and clarify the role of chest physiotherapy in pneumonia management.
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