Dados do Trabalho

Título

Comparative study of performance in the cardiopulmonary exercise test with and without face cloth mask

Introdução e Objetivo

Introduction: The covid-19 pandemic caused changes in social behaviour, one of which was the mandatory use of a face mask. This accessory causes significant discomfort during exercise and increases the perception of effort. It is believed that wearing a cloth face mask is detrimental to cardiopulmonary performance.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of using a 100% cloth face mask on the cardiopulmonary response.

Casuística e Método

This was a prospective, cross-over analytical study of healthy female adults aged 18–35 years, with a minimum weekly exercise time of 150 minutes. Participants completed two (with and without a cloth face mask) cardiopulmonary exercise tests (CPETs) on a treadmill. The parameters evaluated were: blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2), oxygen consumption (VO2), minute ventilation (VE), minute ventilation/carbon dioxide output ratio (VE/VCO2), partial pressure of end-tidal carbon dioxide (PetCO2), respiratory exchange rate (R) and oxygen uptake efficiency slope (OUES).

Resultados

19 female adults were included (age=26.65±4 years). Data indicated that wearing a cloth face mask led to a significant reduction in exercise time of 75.3 seconds, in VO2max (7.26 (5.59; 8.94, p<0.001), VE (24.23 (17.84; 30.62 p<0.001) and OUES 0.66 (0.40; 0.92, p<0.001).

Discussão

Regarding metabolic and ventilatory parameters, it was seen that the mask is, in fact, a detrimental factor to performance, as demonstrated by the statistically significant difference between the percentage of reduction of some values between T1 and T2, such as minute ventilation (VE), oxygen consumption (VO2), respiratory exchange rate (R), and OUES. The amount of oxygen dioxide (CO2) rebreathed by the face-mask system was not enough to generate changes in the measured parameters related to this gas, thus, to assess whether the accumulation of CO2 generated by the cloth mask is sufficient to cause ventilatory and metabolic changes, further studies are needed, and possibly other equipment should be used for this measure. Therefore, the reason for early fatigue and the drop in VO2max with a cloth mask would be related to the physical barrier imposed by the face mask, which provided lower VE values ​​for certain exercise intensities. Furthermore, the VO2 values ​​observed at the respiratory compensation point were lower when using a cloth mask, which may cause a more prominent performance impairment in higher-intensity exercises. The mean value of the respiratory coefficient (R) during T2 was lower than in T1, so when using a cloth mask, the participants could not reach higher intensities of the protocol, stopping it before values suggesting exhaustion were reached.

Conclusão

The results concluded that wearing cloth face masks caused a reduction of 11.6% in exercise time, 12.44% in VO2max and 12.11% in VE. Compared with no mask, participants reported feeling suffocated at higher exercise intensities while wearing a cloth face mask. Wearing a cloth face mask showed to be safe, with no relevant clinical outcomes during the study.