Linda Nici

An Official American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society Policy Statement: Enhancing Implementation, Use, and Delivery of Pulmonary Rehabilitation

RATIONALE Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has demonstrated physiological, symptom-reducing, psychosocial, and health economic benefits for patients with chronic respiratory diseases, yet it is underutilized worldwide. Insufficient funding, resources, and reimbursement; lack of healthcare professional, payer, and patient awareness and knowledge; and additional patient-related barriers all contribute to the gap between the knowledge of the science and benefits of PR and the actual delivery of PR services to suitable patients. OBJECTIVES The objectives of this document are to enhance implementation, use, and delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation to suitable individuals worldwide. METHODS Members of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly and the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Rehabilitation and Chronic Care Group established a Task Force and writing committee to develop a policy statement on PR. The document was modified based on feedback from expert peer reviewers. After cycles of review and revisions, the statement was reviewed and formally approved by the Board of Directors of the ATS and the Science Council and Executive Committee of the ERS. MAIN RESULTS This document articulates policy recommendations for advancing healthcare professional, payer, and patient awareness and knowledge of PR, increasing patient access to PR, and ensuring quality of PR programs. It also recommends areas of future research to establish evidence to support the development of an updated funding and reimbursement policy regarding PR. CONCLUSIONS The ATS and ERS commit to undertake actions that will improve access to and delivery of PR services for suitable patients. They call on their members and other health professional societies, payers, patients, and patient advocacy groups to join in this commitment.

Mechanisms and measures of exercise intolerance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The mechanisms for exercise intolerance in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are complex and multifaceted. Although ventilatory limitation caused by abnormal pulmonary function is a major contributor to this phenomenon, other factors may play an important role in limiting exercise. These other factors include depressed cardiac function, respiratory and peripheral muscle weakness, nutritional imbalances, and psychologic factors. The assessment of the pulmonary patient who complains of decreased functional status must include examination and consideration of all these variables. Only by addressing and treating the combination of these variables as they present in an individual patient will clinicians have the potential to impact that individuals functional status and quality of life.

Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Physical Activity in Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Physical inactivity is common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) compared with age-matched healthy individuals or patients with other chronic diseases. Physical inactivity independently predicts poor outcomes across several aspects of this disease, but it is (at least in principle) treatable in patients with COPD. Pulmonary rehabilitation has arguably the greatest positive effect of any current therapy on exercise capacity in COPD; as such, gains in this area should facilitate increases in physical activity. Furthermore, because pulmonary rehabilitation also emphasizes behavior change through collaborative self-management, it may aid in the translation of increased exercise capacity to greater participation in activities involving physical activity. Both increased exercise capacity and adaptive behavior change are necessary to achieve significant and lasting increases in physical activity in patients with COPD. Unfortunately, it is readily assumed that this translation occurs naturally. This concise clinical review will focus on the effects of a comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation program on physical activity in patients with COPD. Changing physical activity behavior in patients with COPD needs an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together respiratory medicine, rehabilitation sciences, social sciences, and behavioral sciences.

Pulmonary rehabilitation: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW.

The multidisciplinary treatment of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), which includes exercise training, self-management education, and psychosocial and nutritional intervention, is now a standard of care for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and has been incorporated into major guidelines. We must now focus efforts on improving its impact and widening its applicability. What is the direction of PR; where does it fit in the comprehensive care of the COPD patient; and how can clinicians best apply this important intervention? This was the charge of the roundtable discussion, Pulmonary Rehabilitation: Moving Forward, involving 20 experts from North America and Europe, which was convened in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in early 2008. It is not meant to be an exhaustive review; rather, this report summarizes the roundtable proceedings, while providing direction to best position PR into the continuum of COPD care. By consensus, it was agreed upon that although PR is effective for other chronic respiratory diseases, the discussion focus was COPD since most of the evidence base and patient referral are for this disease. These proceedings provide insight into 3 broad areas appropriate for investigation or implementation: positioning PR in an integrated care model for COPD patients; improving the effectiveness of this intervention; and expanding the recognition, application, and accessibility to PR. It is the hope that this document will provide a catalyst for clinicians, investigators, and healthcare policy makers to help realize these goals as well as serve to suggest important areas for future research and development in PR.

Definition of a COPD self-management intervention: International Expert Group consensus

There is an urgent need for consensus on what defines a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) self-management intervention. We aimed to obtain consensus regarding the conceptual definition of a COPD self-management intervention by engaging an international panel of COPD self-management experts using Delphi technique features and an additional group meeting. In each consensus round the experts were asked to provide feedback on the proposed definition and to score their level of agreement (1=totally disagree; 5=totally agree). The information provided was used to modify the definition for the next consensus round. Thematic analysis was used for free text responses and descriptive statistics were used for agreement scores. In total, 28 experts participated. The consensus round response rate varied randomly over the five rounds (ranging from 48% (n=13) to 85% (n=23)), and mean definition agreement scores increased from 3.8 (round 1) to 4.8 (round 5) with an increasing percentage of experts allocating the highest score of 5 (round 1: 14% (n=3); round 5: 83% (n=19)). In this study we reached consensus regarding a conceptual definition of what should be a COPD self-management intervention, clarifying the requisites for such an intervention. Operationalisation of this conceptual definition in the near future will be an essential next step. Consensus of a conceptual definition of what should be a COPD self-management intervention with its requisites http://ow.ly/Zfr0F

Association of change in depression and anxiety symptoms with functional outcomes in pulmonary rehabilitation patients

OBJECTIVE Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has emerged over the last decade as an essential component of an integrated approach to managing patients with chronic respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We sought to examine how depression and anxiety symptom changes relate to disease-specific quality of life outcomes following PR. METHODS We performed a cohort study of 81 patients with COPD who completed PR at a Veterans Administration Medical Center. Pulmonary rehabilitation consisted of supervised exercise training and education twice weekly for 8 weeks. Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories (BDI and BAI) assessed symptom burden at baseline and completion of PR. We measured change in disease-specific quality of life using the dyspnea, mastery, emotion and fatigue domains of the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire Self-Reported (CRQ-SR) from baseline to completion of PR. RESULTS Participants were 69.8±9.1 years old and all male. Forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) was 1.23±0.39 L. The CRQ-SR scores improved significantly: dyspnea (P<.0001), mastery (P=.015) and fatigue (P=.017). The BDI scores improved significantly (13.1±10.5 to 10.8±9.9, P=.003; BAI: 13.1±10.1 to 12.1±11.7). Multivariate regression models controlling for age, FEV1, depression treatment and anxiety treatment showed that improvement in depressive symptoms were associated with improvement in fatigue (P=.003), emotion (P=.003) and mastery (P=.01). Anxiety symptom change was not significantly associated with change in disease-specific quality of life domains. CONCLUSION Addressing anxiety symptoms in PR patients may be indicated because disease-specific quality of life improvement appears to be associated with mood.

Self-Management in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Time for a Paradigm Shift?

Self-management in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, centering on an action plan for the exacerbation and enhanced communication between the patient and health care providers, makes good clinical sense. However, five relatively large trials of self-management in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have had inconsistent results: only two demonstrated reductions in health care utilization and one had to be discontinued prematurely because of increased mortality. Do these discordant findings require a paradigm shift in our concept of self-management? Probably not-but an analysis of the negative studies can give us valuable insights. There are data to support the idea that patients in the trial that showed increased mortality did not self-manage appropriately. Only 4.5% of these patients called in before starting treatment for their exacerbation, the time to initiation of antibiotics or steroids was unsatisfactorily long, and the intervention arm used minimally more prednisone and antibiotics than the control arm. The reasons for a higher mortality will likely never be known, but it is possible that these high-risk patients may have needed earlier assessment by a trained professional, or that self-management led to overconfidence and treatment delays. We clearly need more effective ways to implement self-management and better define which groups of patients stand to benefit (or be harmed) by this intervention. This will require an investment in well-thought-out clinical trials.

Pulmonary rehabilitation and palliative care in COPD: Two sides of the same coin?

Pulmonary rehabilitation and palliative care are two important components of the integrated care of the patient with chronic respiratory disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These two interventions are remarkably similar in many respects. Both utilize a multidisciplinary team that focuses on the specific needs of the individual patient. Care in both is goal defined and includes relief of symptoms and improvements in functional status and quality of life. Pulmonary rehabilitation is commonly given in a specific setting, such as a hospital-based outpatient setting, while palliative care is often hospital based, with its services extending into the home setting in the form of hospice. Components of pulmonary rehabilitation and palliative care should be administered as part of good medical care. Both pulmonary rehabilitation and palliative care are currently underutilized in the respiratory patient, and often provided relatively late in the patient’s clinical course. The case provided illustrates the often-overwhelming symptom burden of advanced COPD and demonstrates opportunities for the application of these twin interventions.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease : , Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease : , کتابخانه دیجیتال جندی شاپور اهواز

The role of pulmonary rehabilitation in the lung cancer patient.

Lung cancer is the most common deadly malignancy in the United States. It is estimated that 219,440 men and women in the United States will be diagnosed with lung cancer and 159,390 will die of lung cancer in 2009. The overall 5-year survival rate is 15.6%; however, survival rates are much higher (52.6%) for patients who are diagnosed when the cancer is confined to the primary site. Unfortunately, a minority of patients (15%) are diagnosed at this stage. Although the most effective treatment for lung cancer is surgical resection, many patients have significant underlying chronic lung disease as well as other comorbidities, which may increase perioperative risk and possibly exclude them from undergoing surgery. Preoperative assessment is essential for proper risk stratification, but there are important questions that remain to be answered as to (1) whether preoperative or postoperative pulmonary rehabilitation can result in less perioperative morbidity and mortality, (2) whether the institution of preoperative pulmonary rehabilitation can allow more patients to undergo potentially curative surgical resection, and (3) whether pulmonary rehabilitation can play a role in those patients not eligible for surgery.