ExACT-CF
Research type
Research Study
Full title
ExACT-CF: Exercise as an Airway Clearance Technique in people with Cystic Fibrosis – A randomised pilot trial
IRAS ID
313455
Contact name
Zoe Saynor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Cystic Fibrosis (CF) causes problems with movement of salt and water in the body, which may cause sticky mucus to build up in the lungs. People with CF are asked to do chest physiotherapy at least once per day, to loosen and clear mucus from their airways. However, many say it is time-consuming, and have asked if doing exercise could have the same effect as chest physiotherapy for clearing mucus. Exercise could be more enjoyable and less burdensome, with surveys (including one by our team) showing that many people with CF sometimes replace chest physiotherapy with exercise for airway clearance already.
We will study 50 people with CF who are >10 years old for 28 days. We will randomly ask half of them to continue chest physiotherapy, and half to stop chest physiotherapy altogether and do exercise for airway clearance therapy (ExACT) at least once a day instead. ExACT is exercise of >20 minutes duration, which makes you breathe deeply, using types of exercise from a list we will provide. ExACT should be combined with assessment breaths, coughs and huffs to help clear airway secretions.
We want to know if people with CF would be willing to take part in research that asks them to either continue with chest physiotherapy, or to stop this and do exercise (with coughs and huffs) instead.In our study, we hope to understand the effects of stopping chest physiotherapy to find out if exercise can be safely used instead. We will talk with people with CF and CF team members to understand their experiences of our research study. Together, this information will help us to try to design a larger study to more fully answer the question of whether certain forms of exercise can safely be used as an alternative to chest physiotherapy.
REC name
Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/YH/0223
Date of REC Opinion
1 Nov 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion