FAB study: Fan, Activity and Breathlessness: assessing the fan’s capacity to increase physical activity in patients with breathlessness and reducing carer anxiety

In people with intractable breathlessness, is a low or high speed hand held battery-operated fan with advice on management of breathlessness more effective than advice on management of breathlessness only in improving activity levels?

Status

Active, not recruiting

Phases

Phase 2

Study type

Interventional

Source

ANZCTR

Registry ID

ACTRN12614000525684

Acronym

FAB

Enrollment

Registered

2014-05-16

Start date

2013-03-11

Completion date

2014-02-20

Last updated

2020-01-13

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

None listed

Brief summary

Many people live with the distress and difficulties arising from breathlessness which continues despite treatment of the disease which is causing it. Exercise is known to be important and helpful for breathlessness, but the breathlessness itself, inevitably triggered by exertion, often puts people off persisting with this. Simple measures such as the use of a hand held battery operated fan to give cool airflow to the face can be helpful in easing breathlessness. The fan is cheap, easy to use and to carry around and something that both patient and their carer can manage, but it has never been assessed to see whether such a simple device could support people to exercise more as part of their daily routine. However, it is likely that in order to test this question, we will need a big study with several research teams who have an interest in the area working together. This study is the first step in planning such a study involving colleagues in the UK and Australia. This first stage, therefore, is to see how we should set up such a study with regard to the following: 1. Will patient participants find the study we propose acceptable and practical? 2. What are the practicalities of working together with colleagues from the UK? 3. What number of participants would we need to make the full study able to answer our research question and is it possible to recruit sufficient numbers?

Interventions

Participants will be allocated to receive: Fan A: a hand held, battery-operated fan that generates a low air flow rate and general advice about breathlessness management and exercise.; or Fan B: a hand held, battery-operated fan that generates a high air flow rate (three bladed hand held battery operated Cooler Multi Function Personal Mini Fan by Design Go) and general advice about breathlessness management and exercise. Intervention participants will be taught how to use the hand held battery operated fan in the context of general advice about breathlessness management and exercise. Participants will be encouraged to use the fan when they feel breathless e.g. in relation to waking, exercise and other daily activities over the following 28 days.

Study design

Allocation

Randomised controlled trial

Intervention model

Parallel

Primary purpose

Treatment

Masking

Open (masking not used)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

All

Age

18 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Over 18 Able to provide verbal or written consent to take part in the study Living in the community with or without a carer Intractable breathlessness from all causes, for whom all reversible components of breathlessness have been addressed Level 3 or higher on the modified Medical Research Council (mMRC) Dyspnoea scale; and Have not used the hand held fan for breathlessness during the past week.

Exclusion criteria

Too breathless to participate in study in the opinion of investigator and/or patient Cognitively impaired and unable to understand the study Medical Research Council (MRC) Dyspnoea scale < 3

Outcome results