RESEARCH ARTICLE
Does Prior Training Affect Acute O2 Supply Responses During Exercise in Desaturator COPD Patients?
Delample Delphine *, 1, 2, Meritxell Sabate2, Christian Préfaut1, Fabienne Durand1, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 29
Last Page: 34
Publisher ID: TORMJ-2-29
DOI: 10.2174/1874306400802010029
Article History:
Received Date: 7/12/2007Revision Received Date: 4/2/2008
Acceptance Date: 27/2/2008
Electronic publication date: 13/3/2008
Collection year: 2008

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/), which permits unrestrictive use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
This study investigated the effects of a prior individualized training program (TP) on the response to acute oxygen supply during exercise in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients showing exercise-induced desaturation.
Methods
Twenty-two COPD patients (mean [SD] FEV1 = 52.1 [3]% predicted) who desaturated on exercise participated in a TP. Exercise tolerance while breathing compressed air or oxygen was assessed using a walking test (WT) before and after TP. Oxygen flow was individualized.
Results
Before TP, acute oxygen supply improved mean exercise tolerance. But this response was heterogeneous as only 8 patients increased their walking distance with oxygen. TP improved exercise tolerance in the entire population. However, a greater affect of oxygen administration during exercise was not observed after TP. The response to oxygen again showed great disparity as only 6 patients increased their walking distance with oxygen after TP.
Conclusion
The response to oxygen supply during exercise varied among COPD patients. Moreover, despite the clinical benefits of TP, no cumulative effect of TP and oxygen supply was observed during exercise performance.