The effect of local heat therapy on fatigue among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A randomized controlled clinical trial

Fatigue is one of the most prevalent symptoms among people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Heat therapy is considered as one of the proposed methods to relieve the symptoms in these patients. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of local heat therapy on fatigue among patients with COPD.

This randomized controlled clinical trial study was conducted on 46 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease referred to Allameh Bohlool Hospital in Gonabad, Iran in 2019. The participants were selected according to the inclusion criteria and were then randomly assigned to the two groups of intervention and placebo. Local packs were placed on the anterior of the chest twice a day for 23 minutes and for five days among the participants of both groups. The hot pack was 50ºC for the patients in the intervention group, but it was equal to body temperature in the placebo group. The severity of fatigue was once measured before the intervention and then one day after the final intervention in both groups. The demographic information form and Krupp fatigue severity scale were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics and chi-square, Mann-Whitney, and Wilcoxon tests were used to analyze the data. Besides, the level of significance was considered at least 0.05.

The results indicated that the two groups were homogenous in terms of demographic information and the type of disease (P>0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the mean score of fatigue before the intervention in the experimental and placebo groups (P=0.9). However, the mean score of fatigue decreased significantly among the intervention group patients compared to those in the placebo group (P<0.001) after the intervention. There was also a significant difference between the two groups in the mean score of fatigue before and after the intervention (P<0.01).

According to the results, topical heat therapy is effective in reducing fatigue among patients with COPD, but it is recommended to conduct further studies before the implementation of this approach.