Influence of the intervention program according to Pulmonary Rehabilitation principles on breathing functions of healthy individuals

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of the study is to develop and verify an intervention program based on find-ings of the subject field Pulmonary Rehabilitation and the application of such programme to a daily program of healthy probands over a six-week period. The authors were concerned with determining whether an intervention program, based on a combination of aerobic load and resistance training, might affect the breathing stereotype and breathing functions in healthy individuals. Methods: Muscle dynamometer MD03 was used to examine the extent of engagement of in-dividual breathing regions. Breathing functions, or more specifically, the forced vital capacity (FVC) and one-second vital capacity (FEV1), were measured by means of Spirometer Ot-thon, and the evaluation was conducted using program ThorSoft. The intervention included 6 probands at the age of 21.3 ± 0.8 who exercise regularly. The probands underwent initial and final tests. The data obtained were evaluated and substantial significance was deter-mined using Cohen’s d, and the Student’s paired t test for dependent selection. Significance value was determined at significance value α = 0.05. Data were processed in programs Mi-crosoft Excel 2016 and Statistica 12. Results: The tested set of probands showed a substantially significant change of value FVC (Cohen’s d = −0.13, i.e. a small effect). This change was also statistically significant. As regards value FEV , a substantially significant change incurred (Cohen’s d = −0.23, i.e. a small effect). Likewise, this change was statistically significant. The analysis of breathing movements of the observed group of probands revealed improvement especially in the lower thoracic region (abdominal) following the completion of the intervention program. In resting breathing, a substantially significant (Cohen’s d = 2.83, a large effect) as well as statistically significant change was effectuated in this region. In the middle thoracic region, a substantial-ly significant change (Cohen’s d = 0.01, i.e. a small effect) incurred; however, there was no statistical change. No substantially or statistically significant changes were obtained for the upper thoracic (subclavian) region. Conclusion: Our results imply that the aforementioned intervention applied in healthy individ-uals who exercise regularly hasn’t had a positive influence on breathing functions. Though there was a small improvement in the breathing stereotype, the optimum engagement of the abdominal breathing region within the breathing wave as described in specialized literature was not accomplished.