Effect of Inspiratory Muscle Training on Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

Abstract

Patients with type 2 diabetes have poor health-related quality of life due to the disease itself and/or its complications. Pharmacological treatment alone seems to be insufficient to improve quality of life for those patients. Thus, additional interventions are needed to achieve this target. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of inspiratory muscle training (IMT) on health-related quality of life as an adjunctive to drug treatment in type 2 diabetics. Twenty eight female patients with type 2 diabetes were equally assigned into two equal groups. The first group was the study group and received supervised IMT at low intensity (30% Pimax), once daily, 5 days per week, and for 8 weeks plus oral hypoglycemic medications. The second group acted as a control group and received oral hypoglycemic medications only. Health-related quality of life was assessed by the EuroQoL Group’s 5-dimension 5-level questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) and the Short Form-12 (SF-12) Health Survey. Glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) was also measured. Results showed that, IMT induced significant improvement in SF-12 physical functioning and vitality domains with observed non-significant improvements in other Sf-12 domains and EQ-5D-5L VAS score. Also, HbA1c was not improved in either group. In addition, there was between-group significant difference in (EQ-5D-5L) VAS score, SF-12 physical functioning, role physical, role emotional, bodily pain, and social functioning domains. Conclusion: Despite having no effect on glycemic control, low intensity inspiratory muscle training still can improve some aspects of health-related quality of life in female patients with type 2 diabetes.