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The Efficacy of External Diaphragm Pacing in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

cardiology
immunology
respiratory-medicine
environmental-impacts

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the application effect of external diaphragm pacing in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Methods: Databases including CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, CBM, Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science were searched from their inception to January 2025. Two researchers independently conducted a literature search and screening, and after evaluating the quality of the literature, a meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software.

Results: A total of 9 studies involving 790 patients were included. The meta-analysis results showed that after the implementation of external diaphragm pacing, the 6MWD, PaO2, PaCO2, FVC, and SGRQ of the intervention group were significantly better than those of the control group. However, for FEV1 and FEV1/FVC, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups only when the intervention duration was ≦ 3 weeks.

Conclusion: External diaphragm pacing can improve the exercise endurance, blood gas analysis results, pulmonary function, and respiratory status of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Nevertheless, large-scale, high-quality, multicenter clinical randomized controlled trials are still needed in the future to further verify the effectiveness of this method.

PROSPERO registration number is (CRD-420251132822)
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