Adjunctive inspiratory muscle training for patients with COVID-19 (COVIDIMT): protocol for randomised controlled double-blind trial

INTRODUCTION: A significant number of patients with COVID-19 may experience dyspnoea, anxiety, depression, pain, fatigue and physical impairment symptoms, raising the need for a multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach, especially for those with advanced age, obesity, comorbidities and organ failure. Traditional pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), including exercise training, psychosocial counselling and education, has been employed to improve pulmonary function, exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with COVID-19. However, the effects of inspiratory muscle training (IMT) in PR programmes remain unclear. This study aimed to determine whether the addition of a supervised IMT in a PR is more effective than PR itself in improving dyspnoea, health-related quality of life and exercise capacity in symptomatic patients with post-COVID-19. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This parallel-group, assessor-blinded randomised controlled trial, powered for superiority, aimed to assess exercise capacity as the primary outcome. A total of 138 are being recruited at two PR centres in Brazil. Following baseline testing, participants will be randomised using concealed allocation, to receive either (1) standard PR with sham IMT or (2) standard PR added to IMT. Treatment effects or differences between the outcomes (at baseline, after 8 and 16 weeks, and after 6 months) of the study groups will be analysed using an ordinary two-way analysis of variance. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This trial was approved by the Brazilian National Ethics Committee and obtained approval on 7 October 2020 (document number 4324069). The findings will be disseminated through publications in peer-reviewed journals and conference presentations. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04595097.