Effectiveness of High Flow Nasal Cannula on Exercise Endurance among Patients under Pulmonary Rehabilitation

It has been confirmed that pulmonary rehabilitation can alleviate pulmonary symptoms, exercise endurance, and quality of life. Exercise training is the best available means of improving muscle function in COPD. The exercise training for patients with COPD improves their intensity, endurance, and duration of exercise. To enhance the benefit of exercise training, regiments that may be adjoined, such as oxygen therapy, noninvasive mechanical ventilation (NIV), neuromuscular electrical stimulation. The outcome of oxygen therapy during exercise remains controversy. The use of NIV during exercise unloads the respiratory muscles and reduces work of breathing during exercise in COPD, thus the intensity during training can be improved. The use of facemask for NIV during exercise may be more uncomfortable, potentially reducing the patient’s compliance to the procedure. The time required for setting up the ventilator and monitoring may increase the difficulty of completing the training. High flow nasal cannula provides stable oxygen concentration and the gas is heated to 37℃ degrees and 100％ of relative humidity. Thus, the tolerance of the therapy is increased as the nose irritation from the gas flow is reduced; furthermore, the gas creates of a pressure similar to continue positive airway pressure. Therefore, we aim of this randomized cross over study is to compare the use of high flow nasal cannula to conventional nasal cannula therapy, adjoining the exercise training as part of pulmonary rehabilitation program, on respiratory muscle intensity, endurance, and respiratory parameters. Maximum inspiratory muscle strength, 6-minutes walking test, cardiopulmonary exercise test, perfusion of quadriceps, COPD patient assessment, and Borg score will be performed before and after the training course.

Project ID:PC10507-0279
External Project ID:MOST105-2314-B182-041