St George’s Hospital Charity have funded the installation of a treadmill and an exercise bike for our paediatric outpatients’ department (also known as The Dragon Centre).

These pieces of equipment will make a huge difference to the treatment of a wide range of our patients with respiratory conditions.

The installation of the bike and treadmill in the paediatric physiotherapy gym will largely be used for exercise testing and pulmonary rehabilitation in children and young people. This will benefit patients with various respiratory conditions, including bronchiectasis (a condition where the airways of the lungs become abnormally widened leading to a build-up of excess mucus).

Bronchiectasis can make the lungs more vulnerable to infection, so pulmonary testing is important but daily exercise sessions have previously been difficult to offer due to lack of equipment. The installation of exercise equipment will allow for appropriate exercise sessions to be offered, alongside facilitating a better assessment of patients with conditions such as asthma and breathing pattern disorders.

The team, led by Richard Chavasse, Consultant at St George’s, believes that the exercise bike alone will benefit more than 200-400 patients annually. It will also be used to manage anxieties around exercise, to assess and treat inpatients with neurological disorders as well as being useful in the assessment and treatment of numerous other young patients.

St George’s Hospital Charity are thrilled to have been able to fund these wide-reaching pieces of equipment that will benefit so many patients and families at St George’s.