The Effect of Respiratory Exercise Applied to COPD Patients With Virtual Reality Glasses on Dyspnea, Anxiety and Quality of Life

Breathing exercises are the most important part of pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD patients. It helps patients to increase their lung capacity, allowing them to breathe more easily. At the same time, since the patient can easily do breathing exercises by himself, it is also beneficial to provide disease control and self-management. Although breathing exercises are simple and easy to apply, difficulties in the disease process can prevent the individual from doing this. For this reason, there is a need for applications that will attract the attention and interest of patients or direct them, but that will not create commitment to the hospital. In this sense, it has been reported that breathing exercises to be applied through virtual reality glasses will attract the attention and interest of the patient, increase their motivation and make breathing exercises more regular. Therefore, this study was planned to determine the effect of breathing exercises applied with virtual reality glasses on dyspnea, anxiety and quality of life in COPD patients. Material and Method: The study was conducted in a single-blind pre-test post-test parallel group randomized controlled experimental design. The sample size of the study was determined as a result of the power analysis made by taking FEV1% in a study, and considering the losses, it was planned to form the sample of the study of 48 patients, 24 in the experimental and 24 in the control group. In the study, block randomization was chosen to reduce selection bias and distribute patients equally to groups. Patients who accept to participate in the study who meet the inclusion criteria will be pre-tested and assigned to the groups. Since the intervention will be applied in the research, investigator blinding will not be possible, and it is planned to blind the participants, whose consent forms have been prepared separately for the patients in the experimental and control groups. Statistician will be blinded. COPD Patient Identification Form, Pulmonary Function Test Evaluation Form, COPD Evaluation Test (CAT), Modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) Dyspnea Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), St George Respiratory Questionnaire and Virtual Reality Experience Evaluation Form. Research data will be collected in the pre-test, the fourth week of the research and the post-test (the eighth week of the research). Breathing exercise will be applied to the experimental group with virtual reality glasses. In adapting breathing exercises to virtual reality glasses; The exercise video was first shot by the researcher in front of a green screen. Then, a 3d background design was made by a software developer and it was transformed into a viewable form with these glasses. The exercise video was prepared as 20 minutes. The exercises will be done in the homes of the patients by making home visits. It is planned that the exercises will be done three times a week in a total of 24 sessions. No intervention will be applied to the control group. It is planned to evaluate the research data with the SPSS 26 package program.