NCT01123902

Effectiveness of a Hand-held Fan for Breathlessness

Effectiveness of a Hand-held Fan for Breathlessness: a Randomised Phase II Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 2
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 109 (actual)
• Sponsor: King's College London · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Breathlessness is a common and distressing symptom in advanced disease. A hand-held fan is a simple device which has shown, when directed to the patients face, to be effective in relieving breathlessness. This phase II trial aims to determine the potential effectiveness of a hand-held fan to relieve breathlessness over time and to evaluate the recruitment into the study and the acceptance of the intervention and the control. The intervention to be tested is a HHF directed to the area of the face innervated by the second and third trigeminal nerve branches. A wristband was chosen as control under the assumption that distraction could serve as a placebo. The main outcomes for this study are uptake into the trial (proportion of patients from the longitudinal study participating in the RCT), adherence to the study, and use and acceptance of the intervention and the control. The main outcome for assessing the effect of the hand-held fan is change of severity of breathlessness between baseline and one month and two months, respectively.

Conditions

• Primary Lung Cancer or Secondary Lung Metastases
• COPD III/IV

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DEVICE	hand-held fan	Patients are instructed to direct the hand-held fan towards the face around the central part of the face, the sides of the nose and above the upper lip. The hand-held fan has three soft rotor blades and an unfoldable rotor unit.
DEVICE	wristband	Patients are instructed to wear the wristband continually and pull it regularly at short intervals when breathless or during breathlessness attacks.

Timeline

• Start date: 2006-06-01
• Primary completion: 2008-02-01
• Completion: 2008-02-01
• First posted: 2010-05-14
• Last updated: 2010-05-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United Kingdom