Breathing exercises and comfort after heart surgery
Heart surgery patients receiving device-assisted breathing exercises reported less pain and anxiety than those receiving routine care alone, but the size of these differences is unclear.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
The trial reported lower pain and anxiety and greater comfort with both breathing exercise schedules after heart surgery. However, the abstract gives no score differences or confidence intervals, so readers cannot judge how noticeable the improvements were. It also does not establish whether starting exercises before surgery was better than starting afterward.
The abstract omits participant numbers, symptom scales, and effect sizes. Its short postoperative observations do not establish whether differences persisted beyond the reported assessments.
What researchers found
Postoperative symptom assessments
Both exercise groups differed significantly from routine care alone on postoperative days 1 and 5; score differences were not provided.
What was compared
An incentive spirometer is a device used for breathing exercises. The study compared adding these exercises after surgery, adding them before and afterward, and continuing the clinic's routine care without the added exercises.
Symptoms and physiological measurements
The symptom results were more consistent than the physiological findings. Most measured vital signs, lung function values, and blood gas values showed no statistically significant differences, although selected oxygen measurements and heart rate did differ.
The original publication
The Effect of Breathing Exercise With Incentive Spirometer on Pain, Anxiety, Comfort, and Physiological Parameters Before and After Cardiac Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Experimental Study.
Çiftçi H, Korkut S, Karaca S
J Perianesth Nurs · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 40488685
- Record checked
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