Randomized controlled study:investigation of the effcet of exercise on liver function tests, fatigue and quality of life in patients with liver cirrhosis

Abstract

Background and aims: This randomized controlled study aimed to determine the effect of the exercise program to be applied in patients with cirrhosis on the patient’s biochemistry parameters, quality of life, fatigue level, depression, and quality of sleep. Method: The study population consisted of 84 patients, including the physical exercise group (PE, n = 27), the breathing exercise group (BE, n = 29), and the no intervention group (NI, n = 28).An exercise program (5 minutes warm-up, 30 minutes walking, 5 minutes cooldown) and a 10-minute breathing exercise were requested 7days a week for 3 months in PE and BE patients, respectively. The patients were trained on how to perform the exercises and all the patients were followed up by phone calls on the exercise days and on the same days for the NI group to motivate the patients. Personal Information Form, 6-Minute Walking Test, Body Mass Index (BMI) Assessment Form, SF-36 Quality of Life Scale, Biochemistry Parameters Assessment Form, Child-Pugh Score Assessment Form, Beck’s Depression Inventory, Fatigue Severity Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) were completed by face-to-face interviews at the beginning and the end of the study period. Differences between the data at the onset and at the end within the groups were tested by the Wilcoxon test. Comparisons of the differences of the groups were performed with GLM repeated measures. SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.) and R 4.0.2 software (R software, version 4.0.2, package: nparLD, R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, A