Completed Lungs & Breathing NIHR-supported project Public Health & Healthcare

Physiotherapy for people with severe lung failure

Funder NIHR (part of DHSC)
Recipient organisation NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre
NIHR support Recorded as supported by this research centre
Period Mar 2025 — Mar 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

Patients on specialist life support for severe lung failure currently receive physiotherapy without any standardised guidance. The NHS has no established protocols for airway clearance techniques in this critically ill group, many of whom are still of working age. Thomas Lunn’s fellowship will first review existing evidence on airway clearance for patients on life support, identifying gaps in the research. This will lead to early-stage experimental work focused on patient safety and the timing of treatment selection. If successful, the project could produce the first evidence-based framework for physiotherapy in severe lung failure, directly informing NHS guidelines and improving recovery outcomes for a patient group that has been largely overlooked by research.

View original technical description
Patients experiencing severe lung failure are put on specialist life support. They are very ill and have a complex range of lung problems. There hasn’t been much research into this patient group yet. The NHS guidance for their treatment doesn’t include standards for physiotherapy. Project aims We will focus on airway clearance techniques to see how helpful they might be for people with severe lung failure. We will start by looking at the existing evidence on airway clearance for patients on specialist life support, to see if there are any gaps in the research. This review will lead to some early-stage experimental research. We will focus on patient safety and how treatments are selected and timed. What we hope to achieve We hope this fellowship project, led by Thomas Lunn, will be an important step in developing innovative and evidence-based approaches to care for these patients, many of whom are still of working age.

Researchers

Thomas Lunn (Principal Investigator)

Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Effectiveness of Noninvasive ventilation and High flow nasal oxygen therapy in severe Community Acquired Pneumonia
ExACT-CF: Exercise as an Airway Clearance Technique in people with Cystic Fibrosis – A randomised pilot trial
Improving Outcome Measures For Physiotherapy Trials of Airway Clearance in Adult Cystic Fibrosis
The impact of an aerobic exercise rehabilitation programme on fitness and quality of life in intensive care unit survivors: An exploratory trial
Connecting Lung Structure and Function in Cystic Fibrosis Through Physiological Modelling, Image Analysis, and Uncertainty Quantification

Original classification

Respiratory Disease

Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.