Abstract
Physical therapy a part of icu patients care and it can help in prevention and treatment of respiratory complications like secretion retention, atelectasis, pneumonia, weaning difficulties and impaired mobility. The purpose of our study was to investigate the effect of different physiotherapy modalities for critical ill patients. Forty-five patients with respiratory failure were randomly selected from critical care department Cairo university hospitals. These patients were divided into three groups A, B and C,15 patients for each group, group A assigned to chest physiotherapy only, group B assigned chest physiotherapy in addition to manual hyperinflation, while group C assigned standard chest physiotherapy, manual hyperinflation and respiratory muscles training. oxygenation parameters, strength of respiratory muscles and sputum amount for each patient of the three groups were recorded. Showed significant improvement in the three groups, improvement was higher in group C more than group A and B regarding to oxygenation, respiratory muscles strength and the sputum amount because of adding other modalities to chest physiotherapy. Conclusion: adding of manual hyperinflation and respiratory muscles strength training to chest physiotherapy could be a helpful tool to improve oxygenation and respiratory muscles power and increase sputum clearance in critical ill patients.