Nikhil Prasad Fact checked by:Thailand Medical News Team Jun 24, 2026 1 hour, 22 minutes ago
Medical News: Millions of people worldwide continue to battle Long COVID, often facing persistent shortness of breath, fatigue, reduced stamina, and difficulty carrying out everyday activities months after recovering from their initial infection. Now, new research from Taiwan suggests that a simple handheld breathing device known as an incentive spirometer could offer a practical and affordable way to ease some of these lingering symptoms.
Six weeks of incentive spirometer breathing exercises significantly improved breathlessness and physical function
in Long COVID patients
The study was conducted by researchers from the School of Nursing at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, the Department of Nursing at Tri-Service General Hospital Songshan Branch, the School of Nursing at National Defense Medical University, the Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences at National Defense Medical Center, the Institute of Traditional Medicine at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, the Division of Infection at Tri-Service General Hospital Songshan Branch, and the Performance Examination Center at National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, all located in Taipei, Taiwan.
Long COVID Continues to Burden Survivors
Long COVID remains a major public health concern despite the end of the acute pandemic phase. Many individuals continue to experience symptoms such as breathlessness, chronic cough, chest tightness, fatigue, palpitations, anxiety, and cognitive difficulties months after infection. These symptoms can severely affect quality of life, work performance, and social functioning.
Seeking a simple intervention that could be used at home, researchers evaluated whether incentive spirometer training could improve respiratory symptoms and overall function in Long COVID patients.
What Is an Incentive Spirometer?
An incentive spirometer is a handheld medical device designed to encourage slow, deep breathing that fully expands the lungs. It provides visual feedback through rising balls or a piston inside a chamber when the user inhales correctly.
The device is widely used after surgery, prolonged bed rest, or respiratory illnesses to help prevent complications such as pneumonia. By promoting deep inhalation, it helps open airways, clear mucus, strengthen breathing muscles, and improve lung expansion.
Users breathe in slowly and deeply through a mouthpiece while watching the indicator rise toward a preset target. Healthcare providers often use these targets to monitor progress and improve lung capacity over time.
Study Reveals Significant Benefits
The clinical study enrolled 90 participants who had recovered from COVID-19 within the previous year but continued to experience respiratory symptoms associated with Long COVID. Participants were divided into a waiting-list control group and four intervention groups based on how long it had been since their recovery.
Those receiving treatment performed incentive spirometer exercises three times weekly for six weeks, completing 30 deep inhalations during each session.
The results we
re striking. Participants using the device experienced significant reductions in breathlessness scores, while those in the control group showed no meaningful improvement. The greatest benefits were seen among individuals who began training within three months of recovering from COVID-19.
Breathlessness scores in the earliest intervention group dropped dramatically, approaching levels associated with minimal symptoms. Improvements were also observed in participants who started training six, nine, and even twelve months after infection.
As highlighted in this
Medical News report, the findings suggest that respiratory rehabilitation may still provide meaningful benefits even long after the initial infection has passed.
Walking Ability and Daily Function Improved
Researchers also measured participants' ability to walk for six minutes, a standard assessment of physical endurance and cardiopulmonary function.
Patients who started training within three months of recovery increased their walking distance by more than 50 meters on average. Those who began between three and six months after recovery also demonstrated significant gains.
In addition, all intervention groups reported improvements in their ability to perform daily activities. Functional status scores improved significantly after the six-week program, indicating that participants experienced less disruption in their everyday lives.
Interestingly, oxygen-related blood measurements remained largely unchanged, suggesting that the improvements may have resulted from enhanced breathing efficiency, better lung expansion, and stronger respiratory muscle performance rather than increased oxygen-carrying capacity.
Early Intervention Appears Critical
One of the study's most important findings was the clear advantage of early intervention. Participants who began breathing exercises within three months of recovering from COVID-19 consistently achieved the greatest improvements across multiple measures.
However, researchers emphasized that benefits were still observed even among those who had been struggling with Long COVID symptoms for up to a year, offering hope to patients who may have believed it was too late to seek rehabilitation.
Conclusion
The study provides encouraging evidence that a simple, inexpensive incentive spirometer may help reduce breathlessness, improve physical endurance, and enhance daily functioning in individuals suffering from Long COVID. While larger studies are still needed to confirm the findings and better understand the underlying mechanisms, the results suggest that structured breathing exercises could become an important component of Long COVID recovery programs. The fact that meaningful improvements were seen even many months after infection further highlights the potential value of this accessible rehabilitation approach for millions of affected individuals worldwide.
The study findings were published in the peer reviewed journal: PLOS One.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0351553
For the latest on Long COVID, keep on logging to Thailand
Medical News.
Read Also:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/articles/long-covid
Share
Tweet
Share
