A study protocol of a randomised controlled trial to measure the effects of an augmented prescribed exercise programme (APEP) for frail older medical patients in the acute setting

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Date
2016-04-08
Authors
McCullagh, Ruth
O'Connell, Eimear
O'Meara, Sarah
Perry, Ivan J.
Fitzgerald, Anthony P.
O'Connor, Kieran
Horgan, N. Frances
Timmons, Suzanne
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BioMed Central
Published Version
10.1186/s12877-016-0252-z
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Abstract
Background: Older adults experience functional decline in hospital leading to increased healthcare burden and morbidity. The benefits of augmented exercise in hospital remain uncertain. The aim of this trial is to measure the short and longer-term effects of augmented exercise for older medical in-patients on their physical performance, quality of life and health care utilisation. Design and Methods: Two hundred and twenty older medical patients will be blindly randomly allocated to the intervention or sham groups. Both groups will receive usual care (including routine physiotherapy care) augmented by two daily exercise sessions. The sham group will receive stretching and relaxation exercises while the intervention group will receive tailored strengthening and balance exercises. Differences between groups will be measured at baseline, discharge, and three months. The primary outcome measure will be length of stay. The secondary outcome measures will be healthcare utilisation, activity (accelerometry), physical performance (Short Physical Performance Battery), falls history in hospital and quality of life (EQ-5D-5 L). Discussion: This simple intervention has the potential to transform the outcomes of the older patient in the acute setting.
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Keywords
Frail , Medical , Inpatients , Exercise , Physiotherapy , Length of stay
Citation
McCullagh, R., O’Connell, E., O’Meara, S., Perry, I., Fitzgerald, A., O’Connor, K., Horgan, N. F. and Timmons, S. (2016) ‘A study protocol of a randomised controlled trial to measure the effects of an augmented prescribed exercise programme (APEP) for frail older medical patients in the acute setting’, BMC Geriatrics, 16(79), pp. 1-7. doi: 10.1186/s12877-016-0252-z
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/3131
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Medicine - Journal Articles
Centre for Gerontology and Rehabilitation - Journal Articles
Public Health - Journal Articles
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© 2016 McCullagh et al. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.