Effects of a Community Based Exercise Program in Adults With Severe Burns
Condition: Burn Injury; Psychosocial Problem; Quality of Life
MeSH terms: Burns
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of this proposal is to assess the efficacy of implementing a 12-week structured
      and supervised community-based exercise program (COMBEX) at hospital discharge. The
      investigators will assess the effect of exercise on mental health and physical function,
      along with its effects on the amelioration of the burn-induced catabolic response.

      The central hypothesis of this proposal is that exercise-induced physical and psychosocial
      benefits obtained during a supervised and structured COMBEX program in severely burned adults
      will improve physical function, and quality of life relative to Standard of Care (SOC).
    

Detailed description: 
      The current Standard of Care in the physical rehabilitation of burned individuals is to
      discharge them home with prescribed written, physical and occupational therapy rehabilitation
      activities. We believe that a supervised and structured COMBEX program early during the
      recovery phase will increase physical function, translate into improvements in QOL, and
      produce results far superior to current Standard of Care. We intend with this study to
      eliminate the physical inactivity that occurs with the present standard of care and connect
      burned victims with COMBEX. This is also important since an inactive lifestyle is a health
      risk factor even in the physically-able individual. Thus, a fitter burned individual should
      more readily meet the physical demands of activities of daily living. Activities of daily
      living, whether occupational or leisure, are integrated functions requiring cardiovascular
      and muscle endurance and muscle strength. Therefore, successful rehabilitation programs need
      to also optimize cardiopulmonary and muscle endurance, strength and function; a need that
      exercise should fulfill. Additionally, a successful rehabilitation program should improve QOL
      and community engagement. Accordingly, in the present grant application, we propose using
      exercise as the integral and central interventional tool to counteract physical dysfunction
      in burned individuals, thereby improving overall functional physical capacity, but also
      preventing secondary conditions that result from prolonged or maintained physical inactivity
      and disability. Finally, this increase in physical capacity will allow for an improvement in
      the QOL of burned individuals, evidenced by increased psychosocial responses measured by
      increased self-esteem, social interaction, return to work, and decreased anxiety and
      depression.

      We propose to improve the current Standard of Care by the incorporation of a community-based,
      supervised, structured aerobic and resistive exercise rehabilitation program (COMBEX).

      In addition, our present grant proposal attempts to bypass the exercise training in a burn
      center and translate it into community based facilities. To our knowledge, our studies are
      the only prospective, randomized studies of exercise and the physiological or psychosocial
      responses to aerobic or resistance training and quality of life in burned adults.
    

Intervention name(s): Combex; Standard of Care
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): 12 weeks of exercise with a trainer post discharge.; No exercise training received.
Other intervention name(s): Quality of life questionaires-BSHS-B, SF-12, and back to work; Quality of life questionaires-BSHS-B, SF-12, and back to work
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Supportive Care