Respiratory muscle training in stroke patients with respiratory muscle weakness, dysphagia, and dysarthria – a prospective randomized trial

OBJECTIVE: To examine the efficacy of combined inspiratory and expiratory respiratory muscle training (RMT) with respect to the swallowing function, pulmonary function, functional performance, and dysarthria in patients with stroke. DESIGN: Prospective, randomized controlled trial. SETTING: Tertiary hospital. PARTICIPANTS: The trial included 21 subjects (12 men, 9 women) aged 35 to 80 years presenting with 6 months history of unilateral stroke, respiratory muscle weakness (≥70% predicted maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) and/or ≤70% maximal expiratory pressure (MEP)), dysphagia, or dysarthria. These subjects were randomly assigned to the control (n = 10, rehabilitation) and experimental (n = 11, rehabilitation with RMT) groups. INTERVENTION: Inspiratory RMT starting from 30% to 60% of MIP and expiratory RMT starting from 15% to 75% of MEP for 5 days/week for 6 weeks. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: MIP, MEP, pulmonary function, peak cough flow, perception of dyspnea, Fatigue Assessment Scale, Modified Rankin Scale, Brunnstrom stage, Barthel index, Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS), and parameters of voice analysis. RESULTS: Significant differences were observed between both groups in terms of MIP, forced vital capacity (FVC), and forced expiratory volume per second (FEV1) of the percentage predicted. Significant difference was found with respect to the change in fatigue, shimmer percent, amplitude perturbation quotient, and voice turbulence index (VTI) according to the acoustic analysis in the RMT group. The FEV1/FVC ratio was negatively correlated with jitter percent, relative average perturbation, pitch perturbation quotient, and VTI; the maximum mid-expiratory flow (MMEF) and MMEF% were also negatively correlated with VTI. Significant differences among participants of the same group were observed while comparing the Brunnstrom stage before and after training of the affected limbs and the Barthel scale and FOIS scores in both the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Altogether, 6-week combined inspiratory and expiratory RMT is feasible as adjuvant therapy for stroke patients to improve fatigue level, respiratory muscle strength, lung volume, respiratory flow, and dysarthria. Clinical trial registration number (Clinical Trial Identifier): NCT03491111.