Focused breathing exercises in prevention of postoperative pulmonary complications in lung cancer patients undergoing lung cancer surgery at tertiary care centre, Mumbai

Surgical resection for lung cancer offers best chance of cure from the disease, but is mostly associated with a risk of postoperative pulmonary complications. Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) are the major cause of perioperative morbidity and mortality. Postoperative pulmonary complications following lung resection are associated with longer length of hospital stay, higher rate of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, higher 30-day readmissions, and reduced overall survival. PPCs are responsible for substantially increasing the length of stay of patient in hospital and this length of stay also increases the financial burden of the patient’s family who are already in trouble and put a larger impact on patient’s socioeconomic status. Hence, postoperative pulmonary complications have attracted considerable attention in hospital settings in patients after thoracic surgery and prevention of PPCs is of significant importance. To prevent the occurrence of PPCs, every patient receives postoperative respiratory physiotherapy program as well as early ambulation and lung expansion manoeuvres, including focused deep breathing exercises, incentive spirometry, and airway clearance techniques such as active coughing and sputum expectoration. Focused breathing exercises are used as an alternative treatment in order to combat the dyspnea and improve post operative pulmonary function by teaching patients to utilize more of their lungs. Breathing exercises means elongating and slowing down the inhalation and exhalation, which allow lung cancer patients to take deeper breaths. This increases their intake of oxygen. Exercise before surgery has multiple potential benefits such as improved quality of life, increased pulmonary capacity, endurance, strength and less fatigue with fitness levels before surgery predicting the risk of surgical complications following surgery. The main potential benefit of breathing exercises is to allow air to get right to the bottom of the lungs to help mobilize secretions, by clearing secretions significantly decrease the risk of developing pulmonary complication. In this study, participants need to perform the interventions three times a day for 7 days a week. Investigator wants to know the effect of focused breathing exercises in prevention of postoperative pulmonary complications in lung cancer patients undergoing lung cancer surgery.