Elvis, the Beatles, Frank Sinatra helping lung disease patients breathe easy

She found singing relieved her symptoms and improved her quality of life while managing a terminal lung condition.

Meeting on a video call each week, a group of lung disease patients sang their hearts out for medical research, with Elvis, The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, and Neil Diamond hits on regular rotation.

Mrs Hollingsworth, 68, from Warrnambool in southwest Victoria, loved belting out Sweet Caroline with the group, but said her own tastes leaned local.

"I'm a bit of a Savage Garden fanatic," she said.

The singing treatment was part of a 12-week randomised-controlled trial led by Professor Natasha Smallwood of Monash University and Alfred Health.

The SINFONIA study, recently presented at the European Respiratory Society Congress in Amsterdam, investigated whether singing could offer relief for chronic lung illnesses.

"Group singing is increasingly used to manage symptoms and improve quality of life for people with neurological, mental health, and respiratory conditions," Professor Smallwood said.

"But we need more evidence to prove that this is beneficial, especially for people with interstitial lung disease," she said.

"Chronic breathlessness is a common and highly distressing symptom for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and interstitial lung disease.

"Yet there is a lack of safe, effective, and acceptable treatment options for managing this symptom."

Professor Smallwood said interstitial lung disease (ILD) was a general term for a large group of conditions that caused progressive scarring and inflammation of the lung tissue, affecting hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

The treatment was also used to relieve symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a serious lung condition affecting around 400 million people worldwide.

Mrs Hollingsworth was diagnosed with terminal idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a type of interstitial lung disease, five years before joining the trial.

She was told that the condition could become fatal within three years.

"And here I am, five years later," the 68-year-old said.

"I think it's very important to be optimistic, and that's the thing about this singing trial, it was just wonderful," she said.

"It's uplifting and those little happy endorphins start dancing around when you're singing and opening up the chest."

Mrs Hollingsworth said the 12 weeks of singing sessions helped her "breathe more deeply," a practice she has since continued.

A registered music therapist developed and delivered the SINFONIA sessions held online.

The sessions included time for warmups, breathing exercises, song singing, and social check-ins to foster group connection, the study said.

"Compared to usual care, taking part in the SINFONIA singing program led to improved quality of life for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or interstitial lung disease with chronic breathlessness," Professor Smallwood said.

"These effects were most pronounced amongst people who attended at least eight of the 12 sessions," she said.

Patients completed a questionnaire that recorded their quality of life regarding pain, social functioning, general health and fatigue out of 100.

Professor Smallwood found that the singing group reported having a better quality of life than the control group by 7.4 points.

"The way in which group singing improves quality of life remains unclear and may vary for different participants, but it could be due to better control of breathing, social connection, or mood improvements."

Professor Smallwood's study is unpublished, but Monash University expects it to be accepted by a major journal.