ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Chronic bronchitis is a type of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that is characterized as more than three months of productive coughing that occurs within two years.Globally, 3.6% to 22% of adults in the general population have chronic bronchitis. The main objective of the study is to find out the effects of treadmill training with rib cage mobilization on dyspnea, peak expiratory flow rate in patients with chronic bronchitis.
METHODOLOGY: 30 students were selected using convenient sampling method and randomly divided into two groups. Group A (n=15) received treadmill training with rib cage mobilization and Group B (n=15) received rib cage mobilization alone for 3 days in a week for 2 months.The post-test values were obtained through Modified Borg’s scale for dyspnea and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) values to evaluate the outcome.
RESULTS: There was a statistically significant improvement between the post test values in group A and group B when evaluated with modified Borg’s scale for dyspnea and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) at 5% level of significance. The inter group comparisons showed statistically significant differences was obtained in favour of group A.
CONCLUSION: The study finds that patients with chronic bronchitis who received rib cage mobilization along with treadmill training had greater success in reducing dyspnea and raising peak expiratory flow rate.
KEYWORDS: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Chronic bronchitis (CB), Six-minute walk test (6MWT), Modified Borg’s scale (mborg), Peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR).
Funding acknowlegements: This study was unfunded.
Ethics Committee: Ethical Committee of KG Hospital