CASE REPORT article
Front. Rehabil. Sci.
Sec. Strengthening Rehabilitation in Health Systems
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fresc.2025.1533239
This article is part of the Research TopicFundamentals and Advances in Cardiopulmonary RehabilitationView all 3 articles
Case Report: Rehabilitation assessment and exercise using cardiopulmonary exercise test after coronavirus-disease pneumonia
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Wakayama Medical University, Wakamaya, Japan
- 2Katsuragi Hospital, Kishiwada, Japan
- 3Kyoto Prefectural University, Kyoto, Kyōto, Japan
- 4Chuzan Hospital, Okinawa, Japan
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Coronavirus disease affects not only respiratory function, but also physical function and decreases activities of daily living. Cardiopulmonary evaluation using cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) was performed in two patients with persistent respiratory distress one month after acute treatment for COVID-19. The results showed decrease in exercise tolerance, ventilation ability, oxygenation ability, heart rate reserve, stroke volume, and muscle metabolism in both cases. By performing rehabilitation exercise according to the results of CPET, both patients were able to withdraw from oxygen inhalation, improve their functions (17.4 vs 22.1 in case 1 and 9.0 vs 16.1 in case 2 on peak exercise aerobic capacity), and were discharged to their homes three months after training. Rehabilitation assessment and exercise using CPET in COVID-19 patients could be safe and useful.
Keywords: Cardiopulmonary exercise testing, exercise capacity, COVID-19, Physiotherapy, Pulmonary Rehabilitation, case report
Received: 23 Nov 2024; Accepted: 21 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kouda, Konishi, Kubo and Tajima. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ken Kouda, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Wakayama Medical University, Wakamaya, 641-8509, Japan
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