Can aquatic exercises contribute to the improvement of the gait stereotype function in patients with Long COVID outcomes?, 2022, Lobanov et al

A variety of rehabilitation programmes can be offered to Long COVID patients, specifically physical training. Indeed 90% of these patients reports impairments of verticalization, stability and spatial orientation, making difficult exercise in the gym. The aim of our study was to assess the effectiveness and safety of aquatic exercise techniques as part of a comprehensive rehabilitation program for patients with Long COVID.

The first of a two-stage program involved development of aquatic exercises technique, which was evaluated in 12 patients with impaired upright posture control before and after exercising by "Habilect" video gait analysis system. During the second phase, effectiveness and safety of aqua exercises were tested in water pool as part of a comprehensive rehabilitation programme conducted in 23 patients with Long COVID outcomes. Physical examination, 6-minute step test, Euro-QL-5D questionnaire, Borg scale, laser Doppler flowmetry, cardiointervalography, and spirometry were performed before and after the aquatic exercises program. After the training with aquatic exercises, indices of deviations of the main body axes of the head and the body mass centre ameliorated, as well as direction of body movement vector decreased (p<0.05). This study demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in exercise tolerance in both groups, as measured by the 6-minute step test after rehabilitation. The comparison group averaged 236.7 metres [126; 380] (T=8, p=0.047) after the rehabilitation course and the intervention group averaged 233.71 metres [150; 320] (T=8.0, p=0.047). When tested with the Euro-QL-5D questionnaire, a post-treatment improvement was noted in the comparison group on the anxiety/depression subscale (3 [3;3] (T=0, p=0.043)). In the intervention group, laser Doppler flowmetry revealed a statistically significant increase in microcirculation (6.36 standard units after rehabilitation) [5.54; 8.17] (T=7.0, p=0.004), and a decrease of oxidative metabolism index of 6.89 standard units. [4.76; 6.96] (T=4.0, p=0.03). No serious adverse events were reported. In conclusion, the developed aquatic exercises technique seems to contribute to recovery of impaired upright posture and motor function, normalizing the walking pattern.

Open access, https://www.pagepressjournals.org/index.php/bam/article/view/10698

 

When you define success as nothing, you will always succeed. But unless I'm wrong here, those are just two arms for different interventions being compared to one another, without any control group or actual comparison for non-intervention. I frankly can't make heads or tails of this because it speaks of 12 patients being assessed, then a 2nd phase of 23 doing the exercises.

Also everything depends on how reliable this Habilect thing is, probably not much. Anyway it's a pre-print so the data can't be checked, although they are a joke anyway. Concluding that this is effective out of this beclowns the entire profession.

One thing I keep seeing and didn't clue in until now is this:

This is how it's usually presented. Clinical trials also assess adverse events, but they also note all events. This is why drug ads and boxes have a long list of symptoms that may or may not be the result of the drug. It's standard to do this, as otherwise it's not possible to make informed decisions based on only reporting data that spin positively. Using this standard, most drugs would not report any adverse reactions at all, no side effects.

But in BPS, the standard is only serious adverse events, such as a stroke or cardiac arrest. If it's not deadly serious, nothing gets recorded. So this is a standard way of minimizing, in fact burying, all issues with this model, since most adverse reactions are not only not recorded, they aren't even recognized as relevant.

This is important because we're seeing the same thing out of some studies that aim to dismiss Long Covid: no serious medical conditions were noted. But you can literally be nearly paralyzed in bed, fed by a tube, for years and it doesn't count as an adverse reaction. It's really hard not to conclude that a lot of medical practice is literally based on lies.

 

I'm not clear whether they are using the 6 minute walking test (metres walked in 6 minutes) or the 6 minute step up test(number of steps onto and down from a raised step) as one of their outcome measures?

If it is the 6 minute walking test, these scores are pretty low.

 

Is this saying that oxygen-dependent energy production decreased?