Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) commonly experience dyspnea, which may limit activities of daily living. Pursed-lip breathing improves dyspnea for COPD patients; however, access to pursed-lip breathing training is limited.
Methods: The proposed MELodica Orchestra for DYspnea (MELODY) study will be a single-site pilot study to assess the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of a music-based approach to teach pursed-lip breathing. Patients with COPD and moderate-severe dyspnea are randomized to intervention, education-control, or usual care control groups. Intervention patients meet twice weekly for eight weeks for melodica instruction, group music-making, and COPD education. Safety, feasibility, and efficacy is assessed qualitatively and quantitatively.
Results: This manuscript describes the rationale and methods of the MELODY pilot project.
Conclusions: If pilot data demonstrate efficacy, then a multi-site randomized control trial will be conducted to evaluate program effectiveness and implementation.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03653104.
Keywords: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; dyspnea; music; music therapy; pursed-lip breathing.