Effects of Active Cycle of Breathing Techniques With and Without Acapella in COPD Patients

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease refers to a group of progressive lung diseases the block air flow and make it difficult to breath. It is potentially fatal and fourth leading cause of death in the world. The symptoms of this condition include shortness of breath, frequent coughing, fatigued and tightness in the chest. Due to the secretions in the lungs sometime patients will have great difficulty catching the breath after walking or exercise. Patient will also feel breathless just sitting or relaxing. Active Cycle of breathing technique can be used to mobilize and clear secretions. It will improve their stamina and reduce the episodes of breathlessness, help to remove the secretions from the lungs and feel better overall. Acapella is a small hand held device which help to loosen and clear secretions from the chest it has both resistive and vibratory features. A randomized control trial will be conducted at Gosha e Shifa hospital and General hospital Lahore through convenience sampling technique on 42 patients which will be allocated through simple random sampling through sealed opaque enveloped into group A and group B. Group A will be treated with active cycle of breathing exercises/techniques and Group B will be treated with Acapella device with active cycle of breathing exercise .Outcome measure will be conducted through Modified dyspnea scale, acapella device usage and questionnaire after 4 weeks and also perform Pulmonary function test .Data will be analyzed using SPSS software version 21. After assessing normality of data by Shapiro - wilk test, it will be decided either parametric or non-parametric test will be used within a group or between two groups. Acapella device uses and active cycle of breathing technique will be applied for comparing their effect in patients of COPD.