Study setting and Population:
The study was conducted in Minia; Egyptian Governorate located 234 km south of Cairo City, the capital of Egypt. As there is a lot of Quarry near to Deraya University, we did this study of community service at our university. This study focused on a mountainous region that is abundant in large amounts of rocks as well as mineral stones. This area is ideal for extracting, quarrying, and mining various types of stones. The quarries covered a large portion of the community and consisted of mountainous rocks. The people in this study were quarry workers who worked in both factories and offices. The factories were where the real work of mining, milling, blasting, breaking, bagging, as well as loading stones happened, while the offices were where office work was done.
Subjects:
The study included forty quarry workers ranging in age from (35 -55 years), the BMI ranges from 25 to 34.9 kg/m2, which indicates being overweight or obese in class 1 were randomly selected from Deraya University Outpatients Clinic and Hospital of Cardiothoracic at Minia University in the period from October 2023 to April 2024. The Ethical Committee (No: P.T. REC/012/004295) gave their approval before the trial began from Cairo University, Egypt, Physical Therapy Faculty and also Clinical Trials.gov (NCT06070584) was recorded first registration at 24/9/2024. Signed written informed consent forms from all patients were required before to their participation in our trial. This study was a randomized study every individual took part in the study by randomly selecting from two groups: (Group A) were given aerobic exercises with moderate intensity by engaging in a 30-minute session of walking on an electronic treadmill, for eight weeks, three times a week. (Group B) were given inspiratory muscle training by incentive spirometer for eight weeks, with three fifteen-minute sessions held weekly. Spirometry was used to measure pulmonary function before and following the study was conducted.
Inclusion criteria included quarry employees who had been working in the quarries for at least 5 years prior to the onset of chest diseases. Only men were included in the study as the nature of the quarries needs men. age between 35 and 55 years old, BMI varied from 25 to 34.9 kg/cm2.
Exclusion Criteria: Patients with chest infections, mental instability, chest cancer, musculoskeletal diseases, and other disorders that could potentially impact the study's findings were excluded from the trial.
Instrumentation
The weight and height scale were used to measure BMI (Model MC. Health scale (RTZ-120A, made in China) prior to commencing the study across both groups. Also, we used a mercury sphygmomanometer (Model Riester, Germany) and stethoscope (Model, Littman, USA) to measure systolic blood pressure (SBP) as well as diastolic blood pressure (DBP) of each woman before in addition after the study.
Aerobic exercise:
By increasing aerobic capacity and improving lung function, aerobic exercises are believed to be beneficial.
Treadmill used Kettler Treadmill made in UK have good maximum user weights 120-150kg. This study set out to find out the impact of such aerobic exercise for eight weeks, especially continuous walking on treadmill continuous walking on treadmill, on lung function (FVC, FEV1, and ratio of FEV1/FVC) in quarry workers in Minia, Egypt.
Spirometer:
Spirometry is an essential technique for detecting lung disease, monitoring patients' pulmonary function, and evaluating their suitability for different procedures. (13) Lung function was assessed by Geratherm Respiratory Blue Cherry spirometer; the participant is in an upright position and is wearing nasal clips while holding a handheld mouthpiece and instructed to close his lips on it to avoid escaping of air from sides of mouth piece and ensure complete volume of air be evaluated. before starting test, personal data obtained and recorded in his file as name, age, sex, weight, height as well as BMI then the test started and the participant followed the instruction appear on the screen as, tidal inspiration, deep inspiration, forced expiration and other parameters. the result of the test collected and appear in a report by the Blue Cherry spirometer automatically and the examiner save it on the devise. During previous examinations, three spirometry maneuvers were conducted, then FVC& FEV1 from the maneuver with the greatest FVC that satisfied the criteria were selected for analysis, Additionally, the highest values of FVC& FEV1 from all acceptable maneuvers were used, following current guidelines. (14)
Inspiratory Muscle trainer (incentive spirometer):
The incentive spirometer device is extensively utilized in physical, speech, as well as respiratory therapy to motivate the patient to engage in slow and deep inhalation by providing visual feedback. It is crucial to inhale gently when using a spirometer, as this enables the lungs to expand and the airways to open. The incentive spirometer employs visual feedback to evaluate a patient's inspiratory exertion by quantifying the volume of inhalation. The incentive spirometer is a cost-effective and easily manageable equipment that can be utilized in rehabilitation without any reported adverse effects. Once a patient learns how to use it correctly, it is easy to train and they won't need assistance anymore. Further, patients are more likely to comply with treatment plans when they receive visual feedback. (15)
The procedure of exercises for group A:
- For every patient, the training procedures are outlined.
- Every subject in Both groups participated in an eight-week walking regimen on a treadmill machine, with the following criteria applied: -
- Mode of exercise: aerobic exercise.
- Intensity: moderate intensity, as measured by heart rate (60-75% of maximum heart rate) MHR=220-age. (Karvonan method) (16)
- Heart rate: as measured by the sensor of the treadmill and the pulse oximeter.
- Duration: Every session lasts 30 minutes. A five-minute warm-up and cool-down phase were incorporated into each session, during which the subject performed treadmill exercises at a constant speed and intensity. The conditioning regimen consisted of a 20-minute interval in which the speed of the treadmill was increased until the subject's MHR was reached (60-75 %).
Frequency: Three times weekly for a duration of eight weeks.
The procedure of exercises for Group (B): in addition to aerobic exercise patients used inspiratory muscle training for 15 minutes with an incentive spirometer. every patient was asked to take maximum inspiration as much as possible to raise the balls of the instrument five times then the patient rest, repeat the procedure followed by rest then repeat the same procedure followed by rest.
Evaluation procedures:
Each patient in both groups will undergo the following evaluation procedures conducted by their respective physicians and PTs. Compare the parameters recorded before and following eight weeks.
2- Anthropometric measurements:
To measure weight and height to calculate BMI (BMI=weight(kg)/ height(m2) for patient selection. Model: MC. Health Scale (RTZ-120A.Made in China). Evaluation carried out according to the specified anthropometric protocol as outlined in: BMI = weight (kg) / (height (m)2 (17 -18). "All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations".
Statistical analysis
To contrast the subject characteristics between the groups, an unpaired t-test was used. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to ensure that the data followed a normal distribution. A Levene's test was conducted to assess the homogeneity of variances among the different groups. A Mixed MANOVA was conducted to investigate the impact of the treatment on FVC, FEV1, in addition to the ratio of FVC to FEV1. To conduct multiple comparisons, post hoc tests have been carried out utilizing the Bonferroni correction. The significance level for all statistical tests was set at p < 0.05. For this study, we used SPSS 25 for Windows (IBM SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA) to carry out all of our statistical analysis.