Breathing exercises for asthma

Guidelines for the physiotherapy management of the adult, medical, spontaneously breathing patient

“…These varied interventions provide wide-ranging levels of evidence 117. Other techniques used by physiotherapists but considered complementary or alternative, such as relaxation, acupuncture, pilates and yoga, are discussed in Web Appendix 1.…”

Physiotherapy in Asthma—Seeking Consensus

“…The BTS/ ACPRC guidelines referred to the same papers and another 12 original studies published between 1977 and 2009 (22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33), and four systematic reviews (17)(18)(19)34), including two Cochrane reviews (18)(19). Thus, only two (20,21) of the 18 studies used in the BTS/ACPRC guideline were also used in the GINA document.…”

“…All the four relevant papers (17)(18)(19)34) are the systematic reviews of RCTs, and the two are Cochrane reviews (18,19). Two reviews (18,19) are of high (AMSTAR scores 9) and two (17,34) of low (AMSTAR scores 4 and 1) methodological quality. The authors of one review (AMSTAR score 1) did not conduct a rigorous systematic analysis and they were able to include only four full texts and two abstracts of relevant papers (34).…”

“…In contrast, the BTS/ACPRC recommendations are based on several high and moderate quality controlled trials, among other original studies (Figure, Supplemental Tables S1 and S2), as well as on two Cochrane reviews (18,19) and two other systematic reviews of RCTs (17,34) (Supplemental Tables S3 and S4). The search strategy reported in the GINA document was limited to PubMed, while the authors of the BTS/ ACPRC guideline used a comprehensive search strategy and, what is more, the papers not included in the GINA guidelines were actually indexed in PubMed.…”

“…Finally, after the AMSTAR assessment, we conducted an analysis of primary studies (14)(15)(16) included in one systematic review referenced to in the BTS/ACPRC guideline (17), as the remaining reviews were high-quality Cochrane reviews (18,19) or a low-quality review including studies individually referenced to in the guidelines.…”