Urban environment and physical activity and capacity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Background: Physical activity and exercise capacity are key prognostic factors in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but their environmental determinants are unknown.

Objectives: To test the association between urban environment and objective physical activity, physical activity experience and exercise capacity in COPD.

Methods: We studied 404 patients with mild-to-very severe COPD from a multi-city study in Catalonia, Spain.

Moderate-intensity exercise training or high-intensity interval training to improve aerobic fitness during exercise prehabilitation in patients planned for elective abdominal cancer surgery?

Low preoperative aerobic fitness is associated with an increased risk of postoperative complications and delayed recovery in patients with abdominal cancer. Surgical prehabilitation aims to increase aerobic fitness preoperatively to improve patient- and treatment-related outcomes. However, an optimal physical exercise training program that is effective within the short time period available for prehabilitation (<6 weeks) has not yet been established.

Roles of the physical environment in health-related quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Rationale: Many clinical and psychological factors are known to influence the health-related quality of life (HRQL) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, research on whether environmental factors, such as air pollution, noise, temperature, and blue/green spaces also influence HRQL in COPD has not been systematically investigated.

Objective: To assess the relationship between air pollution, road traffic noise, temperature, and distance to blue/green spaces and respiratory-specific HRQL in COPD.

Digital Support to Multimodal Community-Based Prehabilitation: Looking for Optimization of Health Value Generation.

Prehabilitation has shown its potential for most intra-cavity surgery patients on enhancing preoperative functional capacity and postoperative outcomes. However, its large-scale implementation is limited by several constrictions, such as: i) unsolved practicalities of the service workflow, ii) challenges associated to change management in collaborative care; iii) insufficient access to prehabilitation; iv) relevant percentage of program drop-outs; v) need for program personalization; and, vi) economical sustainability. Transferability of prehabilitation programs from the hospital setting to the community would potentially provide a new scenario with greater accessibility, as well as offer an opportunity to effectively address the aforementioned issues and, thus, optimize healthcare value generation.

Physical activity and cardiac autonomic dysfunction in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A cross-sectional analysis.

Background: The cardiac autonomic function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been poorly studied.

Objectives: We aimed to 1) describe the cardiac autonomic function assessed by heart rate recovery (HRR) and chronotropic response (CR) during a 6-min walk test (6MWT) and afterward and 2) estimate the association of physical activity with HRR and CR in COPD patients.

Methods: This cross-sectional analysis included 320 patients with mild to very severe COPD.