Physical activity and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Reduced physical activity (PA) was the strongest predictor of all-cause mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This scoping review aimed to map the evidence on the current landscape of physical activity, barriers and facilitators, and assessment tools across COPD patients. METHODS: Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review methodology framework guided the conduct of this review. An electronic search was conducted on five English databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Web of Science) and three Chinese databases (CNKI, CQVIP and WAN-FANG) in January 2022. Two authors independently screened the literature, extracted the studies characteristics. RESULTS: The initial search yielded 4389 results, of which 1954 were duplicates. Of the remaining 135 articles, 42 studies met the inclusion criteria. Among the reviewed articles, there were 14 (33.3%) cross-sectional study, 9 (21.4%) cohort study, 4 (9.5%) longitudinal study, 3 qualitative study, 12 (28.7%) randomized control trials. The main barriers identified were older age, women, lung function, comorbidities, COPD symptoms (fear of breathlessness and injury, severe fatigue, anxiety and depression), GOLD stage, frequency of exacerbation, oxygen use, lack of motivation and environment-related (e.g., season and weather). Twelve studies have evaluated the effects of physical exercise (e.g., walking training, pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), pedometer, self-efficacy enhancing intervention and behavioral modification intervention) on PA and showed significant positive effects on the prognosis of patients. However, in real life it is difficult to maintain PA in people with COPD. CONCLUSIONS: Changing PA behavior in patients with COPD requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Future studies need to identify the best instruments to measure physical activity in clinical practice. Future studies should focus on the effects of different types, time and intensity of PA in people with COPD and conduct randomized, adequately-powered, controlled trials to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of behavioral change interventions in PA. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12890-022-02099-4.