International journal of Nursing Education & Research

EFFECTIVENESS OF BREATHING EXERCISES IN IMPROVING THE BREATHING PATTERN OF ASTHMATIC CHILDREN

Jibin V. Varkey* & K. Yeshoda

jibinvarkeyvj@gmail.com

Breathing exercises; Asthma.

Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasms. Asthma statistics showed that 300 million people worldwide suffer from asthma, with 250,000 annual deaths attributed to the disease. Researcher felt that breathing exercises are more effective to improve the quality of life of asthmatic children. The objectives were; to assess the breathing pattern of asthmatic children before introducing breathing exercise in both experimental and control group, to teach techniques of breathing exercises to asthmatic children in experimental group, to assess the breathing pattern of asthmatic children in both experimental and control group for 5 days, to assess the effectiveness of breathing exercises in improving the breathing pattern of asthmatic children, compared the rate of reduction in respiratory distress between experimental and control group of asthmatic children and to find the association between the breathing pattern of asthmatic children and selected demographic variables. The study was carried out in Cheluvamba Government Hospital for Women and Children, Mysore. Data were obtained from 60 children admitted in Hospital. Three point scales for assessing respiratory pattern of asthmatic children was used for the data collection. Purposive sampling technique was used. The research design of study was time series non- equalent control group design. The results of study revealed that total rate of reduction of respiratory distress in experimental and control group was 281 and 50 respectively where as standard deviation of experimental and control group was 4.8 and 5.1 respectively and reduction of respiratory distress after intervention with t- test was 5.4 which were higher than the table value (t58= 1.96, p > 0.05). Hence the research hypothesis (H1) was accepted suggesting that breathing exercises was more effective in improving the breathing pattern of asthmatic children. The chi- square test revealed that there was a significant association between home environment 41.79 and breathing pattern of children, where as there was no significant association between age and waste disposal (χ2 =2.28, 0.54 respectively) and breathing pattern of asthmatic children.