Outcome Measures
Primary and secondary outcomes. Improvements in abdominal
motion during NB and in diaphragmatic mobility,
from baseline to post-DBTP, were used, respectively, as primary
and secondary outcomes. Patients from the CG and TG
were instructed to practice voluntary DB before the first evaluation
of thoracoabdominal motion. This procedure aimed at
evaluating whether a single instruction session was as effective
to change abdominal motion during NB as a supervised DBTP.
Dyspnea, HRQOL, and exercise tolerance were also evaluated