Treating Frailty in Lung Transplant Candidates (PREHAB) (PREHAB)

March 5, 2024 updated by: University of California, San Francisco

Pilot Study of a Home-based Exercise Intervention to Treat Frailty in Lung Transplant Candidates

In this pilot project, 35 lung transplant candidates will be recruited to participate in a three month individualized home-based program focused on exercise and nutrition optimization. This pilot is designed to assess the feasibility of treating frailty before lung transplantation. Participants will complete a 1 day in-person assessment and training session that will include baseline frailty assessment, determination of exercise capacity, and a determination of nutritional status. Based on American Thoracic Society Guidelines and a diet evaluation by a registered dietician, information gathered during the assessment will be used to develop a tailored prescription for exercise and nutrition to be continued at home. Participants will also be taught self-management skills specific to control of dyspnea, fatigue, motivation, and support. Participants will receive training in protocol implementation at home by a coordinator trained in principles of behavior change, adult learning theory, and dyspnea control techniques. Subjects will be provided tablet computers with an app called Aidcube preloaded and taught how to interface with the app. Aidcube is a commercially available exercise platform designed for patients with lung and heart diseases. It was designed with the input of physicians, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, nutritionists who specialize in patients with lung and heart disease and adheres to professional society guidelines for exercise and rehabilitation in patients with lung disease. Subjects will then adhere to a individually tailored home exercise and nutrition program based on their exercise capacity. Aidcube allows clinicians (or in this case the PI and co-PI) the ability to design a customized program of exercises and diet plan through the "provider interface". The subjects interacts with the "patient interface" to complete their exercise program during the 8 week study intervention.

This goal of this pilot project is to determine the feasibility of implementing a home-based exercise and nutrition program with patients with advanced lung disease awaiting lung transplantation.

Information on Aidcube can be found at https://www.aidcube.com.

The overarching aim of this pilot study is preparatory investigation to evaluate the feasibility of performing a home-based intervention to treat frailty in lung transplant candidates.

Specific aims:

  • Establish a sampling time frame and recruitment techniques.
  • Assess willingness to participate
  • Assess adherence and compliance.
  • Identify logistical problems in the in-person and at-home components of the intervention
  • Determine the resources needed for a full-scale study.
  • Provide funding bodies evidence that research team is competent and knowledgeable.
  • Provide funding bodies that the study is feasible

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Lung transplantation aims to extend survival, reduce disability, and improve health-related quality of life for persons suffering from advanced lung diseases. Despite rigorous candidacy screening practices, improvements in surgical and medical management, and iterative advancements in organ allocation policies, nearly 20% of adults awaiting lung transplantation die or are removed from the waiting list due to disease progression prior to receiving a suitable donor offer1. After lung transplantation, nearly the same proportion of patients dies within the first post-operative year2. Notably, serious morbidity after transplantation is increasing, with resultant disability and associated decrements in health-related quality of life3,4. Although known risk factors for death are already incorporated into lung allocation in the United States (Lung Allocation Score [LAS]), persistently high mortality and increasing morbidity underscore the need to identify novel risk factors for poor outcomes in order to maximize the individual and societal benefit of lung transplantation5.

Frailty- measured by simple, non-invasive clinic based instruments- is an independent risk factor for disability, perioperative complications, and mortality in older medical6-9 and surgical populations10-13. Conceptualized first in the field of geriatrics, frailty is defined as a generalized vulnerability to stressors resulting from an accumulation of physiologic deficits across multiple interrelated systems14. These deficits, in turn, deplete the body's physiologic reserves, resulting in a "state-of-risk" for disproportionate declines in health status following exposure to an additional stressor such as major surgery. Drawing from the geriatrics experience, frailty has become recognized more recently as a risk factor for poor outcomes in solid organ transplantation. Specifically, frailty has been found to be associated with delayed graft function and mortality in kidney transplant recipients and waitlist mortality in liver transplant candidates15-17.

The evaluation of geriatric derived measures is particularly important in contemporary lung transplantation. Indeed, older patients are the fastest growing group of lung transplant candidates in the U.S18. Compared to 8% in 2004, patients aged 65 now account for 30% of annual new recipients, outnumbering those aged 50; those aged 60 account for over half of all new transplants19. This rapid trend has outpaced the evidence base, risk stratification tools, and society guidelines needed to identify which older candidates will do well after lung transplantation. Absent better information, transplant programs have resorted to either ad hoc and admittedly arbitrary chronological age cutoffs or "eyeball tests" of fitness for transplant.

The investigators recently identified frailty as prevalent in lung transplant candidates and independently associated with delisting or death on the waitlist18. Very recently, studies in other populations suggest frailty may be reversible through targeted exercise and nutrition programs. While pulmonary rehabilitation programs may achieve similar goals, a substantial proportion of patients cannot access these programs due to geography or insurance limitations. The investigator's overarching hypothesis is that treating frailty with a home-based intervention before transplant may 1) reduce the risk of death or delisting for becoming too debilitated before transplant and 2) may reduce complications, disability, and possibly mortality after lung transplantation. This proposal seeks to generate critical pilot data needed to inform a larger intervention to treat frailty in lung transplant candidates.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

26

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

50 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. Adult lung transplant candidates in the UCSF Lung Transplant Program aged >=50
  2. Ability to understand and speak English or lives with a family member who has the ability to understand and speak English.
  3. A diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or pulmonary fibrosis (PF).
  4. A supplemental oxygen requirement with exercise that can be delivered safely at home using their home oxygen concentrator (as determined by clinically available six-minute walk distance test)
  5. Waitilisted or soon to be waitlisted for lung transplantation at UCSF
  6. Short Physical Performance Battery (SPBB) frailty score of 9 or less (range 0 - 12; lower scores = worse frailty).
  7. Must be an outpatient.
  8. Willing and able to come to UCSF Parnassus Campus for 1 day in-person training program.

Exclusion Criteria:

  1. Inability to speak or understand English or does not live with a family member who has the abilty to understand and speak English.
  2. Subject does not possess home oxygen equipment (if supplemental oxygen is required for exercise)
  3. Already or soon to be enrolled in a traditional hospital based pulmonary rehabilitation program
  4. Lives alone.
  5. A diagnosis of primary or secondary pulmonary hypertension. Diagnosis will be determined by clinically available right heart catheterization pulmonary arterial mean pressure >= 30 mm Hg or transthoracic echocardiogram pulmonary arterial systolic pressure > 50 mm Hg or report of moderate right ventricular dysfunction or worse. These tests are performed as part of routine clinical care in the lung transplant program. Echocardiograms are repeated every 6 months while patients are listed for transplantation.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Other
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intervention
Eligible participants will take part in the home-based pulmonary rehabilitation using the Aidcube platform in-person assessment and training with a research coordinator (i.e. physical exercise capacity assessment, SPPB, disability survey, exercise prescription determination, exercise training, dyspnea control techniques) and complete an follow-up assessment at the 8th week.
Pilot study of a home-based pulmonary rehabilitation study for lung transplant candidates at the University of California San Francisco
Participants will be testing and giving feedback on the use of the Aidcube platform in being able to deliver their home-exercise prescription
No Intervention: No Intervention
Ineligible participants will receive standard of care

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Subject enrollment
Time Frame: Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks
Target patients who do not have access to traditional pulmonary rehabilitation programs
Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks
Subject attrition
Time Frame: Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks
Participant ability to complete program before receiving a lung transplant
Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks
Safety
Time Frame: Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks
Record number of adverse events, specifically (1) extreme breathlessness, fatigue, and/or weakness, (2) chest pain, (3) severe muscle pain, (4) dizziness or feeling faint, (5) leg pain, weakness or cramping, (6) sweating more than usual, (7) increase in mucus production, and (8) oxygen saturation levels falling below 85% during exercise
Through study completion, an average of 8 to 12 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB)
Time Frame: Pre-intervention at week 0 and post-intervention at week 8
Change in SPPB score (MCID = 1 point)
Pre-intervention at week 0 and post-intervention at week 8
Six Minute Walk Distance (6MWD)
Time Frame: Pre-intervention at week 0 and post-intervention at week 8
Change in 6MWD (MCID = 30 meters
Pre-intervention at week 0 and post-intervention at week 8

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Jonathan Singer, MD, MS, University of California, San Francisco

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

December 11, 2015

Primary Completion (Actual)

December 14, 2017

Study Completion (Actual)

December 14, 2017

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 20, 2018

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 28, 2018

First Posted (Actual)

March 7, 2018

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

March 7, 2024

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 5, 2024

Last Verified

March 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 15-17503

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

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