Assessment of Dyspnea in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Lung Diseases with Modified Borg Scale; Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Chronic obstructive lung disease has been defined as the limitation of the bronchial airway that is not frequently fully recovered. It includes emphysema, chronic bronchitis and sometimes asthma. Because of the obstruction in the airway, the patient comes with the presenting complaints of dyspnea, cough, sputum weight loss and cyanosis with variation in the diameter of the wall of the chest. Objective: To subjectively rate dyspnea in patients with chronic obstructive lung disease considering the adult population. Methods: Our current study is a descriptive cross-sectional study. Data for the study was collected from Ghurki Trust Teaching Hospital and Sheikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. The sampling technique employed is the non-probability sampling technique. The sample size for this study was calculated to be 89 by employing World Health Organization software. Older adult males and females with chronic obstructive lung diseases with presenting complaints of dyspnea were recruited in our study. A modified Borg scale was employed to assess the severity of dyspnea among these patients. The patients were scored for their severity from 0.5 to 10 which is followed by no breathlessness to maximal breathlessness. Written consent forms in Urdu and English were given to all the participants before the conduct of the study. The variables of this study were represented in the form of descriptive statistics, tables, graphs and percentages. Results: Most of the patients with chronic obstructive lung diseases reported suffering from very severe dyspnea. Results showed that 32.6% of patients reported suffering from dyspnea of very severe intensity followed by slight and moderate intensity. Conclusion: Our current study concludes that patients with lung diseases are found to suffer from severe dyspnea and this is one of their major complaints. The modified Borg Scale was found to be very easy to comprehend and was easily implemented in the clinical setups. It gives us a more accurate and reliable rating for the severity of dyspnea in these diseases.