6 to 1:1.4 during

the control intervention. There was no effect of order of intervention. This is the first report of positive expiratory pressure being used successfully to prevent hyperinflation during exercise in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The only previous, and unsuccessful, attempt to use positive expiratory pressure during exercise employed a cylindrical device to increase the expiratory pressure but this probably did not provide sufficient resistance to be effective. The data confirmed our hypothesis that PEP would prevent hyperinflation during exercise. The device proved to be acceptable to the patients when used during exercise. Over 80% of those eligible were willing to try it and of those who were willing, all found it acceptable. Furthermore, when used with the regimen of exercise in the study, there were no adverse effects. The expiratory PD173074 ic50 mouth pressure developed during exercise with the conical-PEP device averaged about 13 cmH2O which is the level recommended to maintain patent airways in such patients. Respiratory rate was reduced, largely as a consequence of increased expiratory time. End tidal CO2 and oxygen SB203580 price saturation were not significantly altered by conical-PEP indicating that the physical dimensions of the new conical-PEP device

we have used allow appropriate gas exchange in these patients. Constant work load cycling exercise is recommended for the investigation of exercise capacity in clinical trials (Maltais et al 2005, O’Donnell et al 2001), but the upper body movement involved in cycling makes it difficult to measure some of the parameters of ventilatory pressure and air flow. Consequently we used dynamic quadriceps

exercise whilst sitting which reduces these problems while still using large muscle groups and placing a significant load these on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems. When using leg weights of 30% 1 RM, the patients were exercising at about 70% of their age-predicted maximum heart rate in a type of activity that is often recommended for pulmonary rehabilitation and training in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (Spruit et al 2002). Thus, the training regimen we used is probably a good training protocol for improving aerobic capacity (Spalding et al 2004). Our results clearly indicated that conical-PEP reduced dynamic hyperinflation. Although it did not reach statistical significance, the results also suggest that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease might be able to achieve a greater training load when using conical-PEP. Exercising at 30% 1 RM may involve an element of anaerobic metabolism and consequently we may have underestimated the benefit of conical-PEP during purely aerobic exercise such as walking. Although, on average, the exercise duration was longer with conical-PEP, the wide confidence intervals reflect a lack of precision of the estimate of the mean difference between conical-PEP and normal breathing.