Patients eligible for cardiac surgery are pre-operatively randomized to standard physiotherapy or daily inspiratory muscle training for a period of 2-3 weeks. One therapy session a week is supervised by a physiotherapist in the IMT group. Post-operative physiotherapy is standardized. Pulmonary function and clinical status are evaluated pre-operatively, and during the early post-operative phase, approximately on the 3th and 6th post-operative day, or when necessary. The occurrence of postopercenterative pulmonary complications is determined using a validated scale, the Melbourne group scale, based on clinical status, chest x-ray and blood tests. Frailty is defined based on the Fried criteria. Two Belgian hospitals are involved in this study: the University Hospital Brussels and the Jessa Hospital (Hasselt), the latter mainly focussing on patients referred for minimal invasive heart surgery (minimally invasive-aortic valve replacement (mini-AVR) and Endoscopic - Atraumatic Coronary Artery Bypass (endo-ACAB).
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of pre-operative Inspiratory muscle training (IMT) using an IMT Threshold device (Philips), on early postoperative lung function recovery and on the occurrence of post-operative pulmonary complications (PPC) after major cardiothoracic surgery with and without sternotomy. As frailty can affect postoperative outcome, the relation between frailty, maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) and post-operative outcome is investigated additionally.