Effects of the six-minute walking test on dyspnea and activities of daily living in pneumoconiosis patients

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of walking exer-cise through a 6-min walking test on subjective dyspnea, pulmonary function test, arterial blood gas analysis, and activities of daily living to provide base data for the nursing intervention of pneumoconiosis pa-tients. The subjects were pneumoconiosis patients men aged over 60. This quasi-experimental study was designed with a non-equivalent control group pre- and post -test design, and the study period was Sep-tember to December 2013. Of the pneumoconiosis inpatient subjects, 39 were assigned to the experimental group and the 39 to the control group. Only the experimental group was subjected to a 6-min walking test three times a week for 10 weeks. Subjective dyspnea was mea-sured based on anxiety about dyspnea during and after the exercise. FEV1% prediction and FEV1/FVC% were used to measure the pulmo-nary function. The arterial blood gas was measured based on the pH, PaO2, PaCO2, and activities of daily living. The data were analyzed through an x² and t -test. The study results showed that the 6-min walk-ing test reduced the anxiety about dyspnea of the pneumoconiosis pa-tients during the exercise, moderated the dyspnea index after the per-formance of the activities, and improved the patients’ ability to perform activities of daily living. Thus, walking exercise seems to be an effective nursing intervention to maintain the respiratory rehabilitation outcomes by minimizing the pneumoconiosis patients’ burden.