Feasibility of respiratory muscle training in ILD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The feasibility of respiratory muscle training as part of an interstitial lung disease pulmonary rehabilitation programme
IRAS ID
211628
Contact name
Ian Forrest
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN92567676
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a disease where the lungs scar for unknown reasons and there is a high mortality of 50% 5 years after the first diagnosis.
Current treatments do not lead to significant changes in quality of life or mortality. It is known that patients with lung disease get less well in general and “out of shape”. Exercise or pulmonary rehabilitation, is known to help other lung disease but there are few studies in IPF.
This study will be a starting point for answering this need and request from IPF patients. The project aim is to develop tailored pulmonary rehabilitation for IPF. This will include education, breathing and relaxation techniques, and nutritional and psychological instructions. The education will be combined with exercise suitable for IPF, which will include exercise of the muscles used in breathing.
To see whether the exercise program is acceptable and liked we will ask standard questions that are known to be informative and make clinical measurements of muscle strength. We will take a blood sample to see if measurements from the blood might be useful in IPF research and to see if this could select patients who may need extra treatment(s). We will collect information on ability to exercise, depression and anxiety scores, exacerbation rates and death. Information will be taken before and after the rehabilitation program. This will include breathing muscle training in half the patients.
It is known that small studies can be an important first step to learn and draw lessons for future work. These sort of studies are called “pilot studies”, and in keeping with a pilot study, we will aim to recruit 36 IPF patients. The results of the study will be analysed simply, describing the new information we obtain, and the measurements made will be used to plan further work.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NE/0037
Date of REC Opinion
28 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion