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Updated: Jun 24, 2025

Home-Based Prescribed Pulmonary Exercise in Patients with Stable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Published on: August 24, 2019
Diaphragmatic strengthening exercises for patients with post COVID-19 condition after mild-to-moderate acute COVID-19
Tamer I Abo Elyazed1, Ahmed Abd El-Moneim Abd El-Hakim2, Ola I Saleh3
1Physical Therapy For Internal Medicine Department, Faculty of Physical Therapy, Beni-Suef University, Ben-Suef, Egypt.
Objective:
To assess the clinical effects of incentive spirometry (IS) and diaphragmatic breathing (DB) in patients with post COVID-19 condition and diaphragmatic dysfunction as compared with the standard care alone.
Methods:
The present longitudinal randomized study included 60 patients with post COVID-19 condition and diaphragmatic dysfunction. Patients were equally randomized to receive standard care plus IS (G1), standard care plus DB (G2) or standard care alone (G3) for 8 weeks. The primary outcome is clinical improvement as evaluated by the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) dyspnoea scale.
Results:
Comparison between the studied groups revealed significant improvement in G1 and G2 in all parameters at the end of follow-up. However, no significant improvement was found in G3. At the end of follow-up, 15 patients (75.0%) in G1, 11 patients (55.0%) in G2, and 3 patients (15.0%) in G3 showed improvement on the mMRC dyspnoea scale. Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified mild acute COVID-19 infection (p = 0.009), use of IS (p < 0.001), and use of DB (p = 0.023) as significant predictors of improvement on the mMRC dyspnoea scale.
Conclusions:
IS or DB training in addition to the standard care in post COVID-19 condition was associated with better clinical improvement as compared with the standard care alone.
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