ABSTRACT
This study aimed to determine the effect of moderate to high-intensity aerobic and breathing exercise on cardiorespiratory fitness and health-related Quality of Life (QoL) in post-discharge COVID-19 patients. The study included two groups of participants.A prospective interventional study was conducted at the Bin-Inam Rehabilitation centre at the outpatient department, with 20 recruited patients having below standard 6-min walk test and QoL score at baseline. All the participants underwent five weeks (3 sessions/week) of aerobic training (20–60 min/session) and breathing exercise training (10 min/session). SF-36 health-related QoL modified Borg dyspnoea scale, and 6-min walk test measurements were collected at baseline and final intervention. Paired sample <italic>t</italic>-test was applied to determine the improvement after 5 weeks of intervention. Sub-group analysis according to inpatient ventilatory support used in active course of disease was also performed. A two-factor repeated measure ANOVA was applied to determine the time difference between sub-groups. All the data were analysed by using SPSS 24.0.Cardiorespiratory fitness, dyspnoea and quality of life has been significantly improved after 5-weeks of training. Sub-group analysis revealed that both groups significantly improved over time in measures of endurance, dyspnoea and quality of life (Time effect <italic>p</italic> < 0.05). An increase in exercise tolerance was observed in sub-group 1 (who did not used inpatient ventilatory support) manifested by a longer 6-min walk distance 667.8 (35.32) m compared to sub-group 2 (who used inpatient ventilatory support) 602.9 (46.1) m. There were trends towards greater improvement in General health and Body pain domains of health-related quality of life and dyspnoea in sub-Group 1 compared to sub-Group 2.This study provides evidence that rehabilitation training in COVID-19 recovered patients may benefit the recovery after COVID-19.NCT04445376 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Journal of Physiotherapy is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)