Extract
With great interest we have read the article by Kaasgaard et al. entitled “Use of Singing for Lung Health as an alternative training modality within pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD: an RCT” [1]. Earlier studies already suggested that singing may improve health status, respiratory muscle strength and functional exercise capacity, though, quality of evidence was often low and conflicting findings exist [2]. In this randomised controlled trial, a singing program (“Singing for Lung Health”) was compared with conventional exercise training as part of a 10-week community-based pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) program in patients with COPD. Based on their findings, the authors concluded that a singing program was not inferior to an exercise training program in improving functional exercise capacity. However, there are several methodological issues, which we like to highlight to frame these somewhat surprising results.
Footnotes
This manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the European Respiratory Journal. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJ online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.
Conflict of interest: A. W. Vaes has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: M. A. Spruit is member of the Executive Board of Ciro, which offers inpatient and outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation
Conflict of interest: F. M.E. Franssen is member of the Executive Board of Ciro, which offers inpatient and outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation and reports speaker fees from Chiesi, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, AstraZeneca, consultancy fees from AstraZeneca, MSD and study support from AstraZeneca, outside the submitted work.
Conflict of interest: A. J. van ’t Hul has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C. Burtin has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: R. Gloeckl has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: S. Houben-Wilke has nothing to disclose.
- Received November 9, 2021.
- Accepted November 11, 2021.
- Copyright ©The authors 2021. For reproduction rights and permissions contact permissions{at}ersnet.org
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