Short term effectiveness of Structured Exercise Therapy Protocol on Cardio-respiratory parameters in subjects with COVID

It is already proved that COVID subjects are known to have symptoms like breathless at rest, fever, sore throat and other pneumonia like symptoms. Few studies have demonstrated Physiotherapy intentionally enhances invulnerability towards infection by different exercises on the stipulated part, thus increasing the strength of that part. Cardio-Pulmonary Rehabilitation is known to be useful in treating subjects with cardio-respiratory symptoms. Few studies have already demonstrated exercises have strong significant effect for managing subjects with COVID on High flow nasal cannula as well as Mechanical ventilation. According to authors knowledge there are very less number of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of the Structured Exercise Therapy Protocol for COVID subjects in both types of Oxygen therapy, hence this study is been undertaken. Objective: To investigate the Short term Effectiveness of Structured Exercise Therapy Protocol in subjects diagnosed with COVID on High flow nasal cannula versus Structured Exercise Therapy Protocol on Mechanical ventilation. Methodology: This is a randomized clinical trial conducted on 124 subjects. Subjects were randomly divided into two groups, Group A: 62 subjects with High flow nasal cannula who were given Structured Exercise therapy protocol and Group B: 62 subjects with Mechanical ventilation who were given Structured Exercise Therapy Protocol. Both the groups showed significant improvement with respect to Structured Exercise therapy protocol. On comparison Group A showed high significant results in improvement among modified Borg’s scale of dyspnea, SP02, Respiratory rate, X-ray changes, Heart rate and number of active cough extraction demonstrated significant changes with p value <0.001, <0.05, <0.05 and <0.001 respectively. Whereas Group B showed significant improvement with p value <0.05 for all the parameters. The treatment showed significant improvement in all the outcome measures in group A that is subjects with High flow nasal cannula. Hence, the conclusion is that, Structured Exercise Physiotherapy protocol in subjects with High flow nasal cannula showed early and most significant improvement in subjects with COVID in all the respiratory parameters against subjects with Mechanical Ventilation.