Impact of Aerobics Exercise Training on the Pulse Oximetry of Pregnant Women in a Nigerian Teaching Hospital

Abstract

A significant proportion of women stop exercising after knowing they are pregnant, and only a handful begin exercising throughout pregnancy. Adopting or maintaining a sedentary lifestyle while pregnant may contribute to the development of certain illnesses. Given the worldwide epidemic of sedentary behaviour and obesity-related disease, prenatal physical exercise has been demonstrated to be beneficial in the prevention and treatment of these illnesses.  The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of aerobics exercise training on the pulse oximetry of pregnant women. Sixty-four pregnant women who completed the study were simply randomized into experimental (n=38) and control (n=26) groups and their pre-intervention values were taken and recorded. A ten week, three times weekly aerobic exercise (40 – 45minutes) training was administered on the experimental group. A post-intervention score was also taken from all participants and the data analyzed using mean and standard deviations. Analysis of covariance was used to determine the impact at 0.05 alpha level. Results showed the Aerobic Exercise Training impacted on the pulse oximetry of pregnant women in the experimental group which reduced from a mean score of 97.82+0.73 to 97.66+1.07 and the control group from 96.96+0.87 to 96.15+0.92 . From the foregoing, it was concluded that the Aerobic Exercise Training was impactful on the pulse oximetry of the pregnant women.