News: Some post-COVID patients may benefit from pulmonary rehab, new study shows

The severity and length of post-COVID symptoms has been a topic of study almost ever since the pandemic began. In a new study involving patients with significant respiratory disability following hospitalizations for COVID, daily supervised pulmonary rehabilitation was associated with significant improvement in exercise tolerance and quality of life. The strategy of targeting the large muscle groups and lower limb muscles contributed to their success, MedPage Today reported.

The study analyzed the outcomes of 57 hospitalized patients, 10 who needed non-invasive ventilation and 32 who required mechanical ventilation, before and after eight weeks of the daily rehabilitation. This therapy included breathing strategies, strength training, endurance training, balance, and coordination training. At the beginning, most patients rated their breathlessness during activity as severe to maximal. At the end, the median post-rehab improvement was five points on Borg’s scale, which measures breathlessness during activity on a 10-point scale, with only 13 rating it as more than greater than one point.

“We can come to the conclusion that pulmonary rehabilitation can be used effectively, and that it is a safe and effective intervention in the absence of any other pharmacotherapy to treat post-COVID lung disease,” Pavanjitsingh Dumra, MBBS, of Sparsh Chest Diseases Centre in Ahmedabad, India, told MedPage Today.

Some earlier studies have shown pulmonary rehabilitation to be effective for long-COVID dyspnea, but so far these studies have been small, experimental, and often did not include COVID patients who had been un-hospitalized. Future research is needed on pulmonary rehabilitation’s effects but should include considerations of feasibility, current capacity of the rehabilitation, and resource constraints.

Editor’s note: To read MedPage Today’s coverage of this story, click here.