Exercise with PH
Last year, the PHA UK supported post graduate student Siobhan Haran to carry out a study of physical activity levels amongst people with PH – with the ultimate goal of improving advice and treatment. We caught up with her to find out what happened. Can you explain a bit more about what the study set out to do?
This research was conducted to explore the physical activity levels of people with pulmonary hypertension. This was assessed using both a questionnaire (the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form – known as the IPAQ-SF) and by asking volunteers to wear an activity monitor for one week. We then looked at whether there was any difference between the activity levels recorded by the monitor and the amount of activity the volunteers self-reported when completing the questionnaire. The study also aimed to identify whether the volunteers with PH were meeting the UK government recommendations for physical activity of 150 minutes per week.
Why did you choose this subject for your study?
There is very little evidence showing what activity levels people living with PH are achieving and whether this links in with what is being self-reported. There is also not much evidence to say what the best way is to improve activity levels, and what the ‘best’ type of exercise for people with PH is.
So, what do the results of the study show?
The results show that there was no link between the assessed severity of pulmonary hypertension and either the activity levels the volunteers recorded using the
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questionnaire, or the activity levels recorded using the activity monitor. There was a link between the activity category produced by the questionnaire (low, moderate or high activity levels) and the amount of time the volunteers spent being active - as recorded by the activity monitor. For example, patients that were being more active and doing more steps, tended to have a higher activity level rating on the questionnaire. This may mean that the activity questionnaire we used might be an accurate tool to identify activity levels in people with pulmonary hypertension. Over the week that the volunteers wore the activity monitor, almost 82 per cent of the 11 patients participated in the recommended 150 minutes of moderate physical activity. This is great news! Despite this, the overall physical activity levels of the volunteers that participated in this study were deemed to be low in terms of their daily step count. A high level of participation in sedentary-based activities were also recorded, meaning there may be more work to be done in promoting safe physical activity for people living with pulmonary hypertension.
What happens next?
As this study only involved a small number of people, the results can’t be generalised to all patients with pulmonary hypertension. Further work with more patients would need to be done to prove the link between the IPAQ-SF
