Effect of muscle training on dyspnea in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Abstract

Background:Rehabilitation training is beneficial for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This study was aimed at evaluating the efficacy of muscle training on dyspnea.Methods:We used 5 common databases for conducting a meta-analysis included PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Science Direct, Web of Science and Clinical Trials.gov, and eligible randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included. The main results of include studies were dyspnea of patients who had a clinical diagnosis of COPD measured using Borg score and Medical Research Council (MRC) or modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) scale as the criteria before and after intervention. The intervention measures included respiratory or expiratory muscles or upper limb (UL) or lower limb (LL) training. The mean differences (MD) with the 95% confidence interval (CI) were considered for summary statistics. We also assessed risk of bias using the Cochrane collaboration's tool, and the value of I2was applied to evaluate the heterogeneity of the trials.Results:Fourteen RCTs with 18 interventions (n=860 participants) were included. Muscle training significantly improved dyspnea during exercise and in the daily life of patients with COPD (MD, 95% CI: -0.58, -0.84 to -0.32, P