A nursing intervention to prevent pneumonia in the weak elderlys as a reserve bed-ridden group

1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 08672661
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Nursing
• Research Institution: Yamagata University
• Principal Investigator: SATO Shinobu Yamagata Univ Sch of Med, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (90113951)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MATSUYA Saori Yamagata Univ Sch of Med, Assistant, 医学部, 助手 (60282208)
• Project Period (FY): 1996 – 1997
• Keywords: endurance of respiratory muscle / training of cough / peak expiratory flow in the elderly / fever in the elderly / reserve bed-ridden people / respiratory infection in the elderly

Research Abstract

The effect of respiratory training on the incidence of fever due to respiratory tract infection was studied. We assessed the degree of dementia of the residents in order of admission to a senior nursing home using the revised Hasegawa's Depression Scale (HDS-R). Residents whose HDS-R score was 22 or more were assigned at random either to training or control group. One set of training, including respiratory muscle training for power-up, respiratory muscle endurance training, and training of effective coughing, was loaded to the training group for 30 minutes per day, three days per week for 12 weeks. Body temperature was measured everyday. Peak expiratory flow rate (PEF) was measured every training period. Maximal inspiratory (PImax) and expiratory (PEmax) pressures were obtained every four weeks. Subjects assigned to the control group also were asked to receive the same respiratory function tests. We estimated the effect of the training based on comparison of these parameters. The basic data for the training (5 males, 20 females) and control (6 males, 24 females) group were, 80.0+/-7.2 and 79.7+/-7.3 years for age, 26.5+/-2.5 and 25.7+/-2.4 for HDS-R,36.3+/-0.4 and 36.4+/-0.4ﾟC for body temperature, respectively. Although PEF of the training group was significantly higher at the start than that of the control group (p<0.05), there was no between-groups difference in the PImax and PEmax. We judged that a subject had fever, when the body temperature became his mean plus two standarad deviation of all body temperature values or higher. Comarison of the numbers of Days of fever/total temperature records number between both groups showed no difference. We conclude that the respiratory trainig as performed in the present study failed to decrease the incidence of fever due to respiratory tract infection.