The Benefits of Pulmonary Rehab

• By Elisha Bury
• Jul 01, 2007

Pulmonary Rehab has done much to improve the outcomes of oxygen therapy for COPD patients through a multidisciplinary approach to treatment.

“It has improved exercise tolerance. It has improved quality of life, and there’s been a reduction in health care utilization, meaning doctor’s office visits, emergency department visits and hospitalizations,” says Dr. Brian Carlin, one of the authors of evidence-based clinical guidelines for pulmonary rehab published in a recent supplement to the journal CHEST.

Pulmonary rehab incorporates respiratory therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nutritionists, exercise physiologists, nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists. A key aspect to the six- to 12-week program is exercise, which teaches COPD patients how to work within their limitations to remain active.

The program also teaches energy-conservation techniques that target activities of daily living, such as bathing, toileting, dressing and cooking.

“If you’re 70 years old with COPD, the idea of getting down on your hands and knees and weeding in a garden is not a reality; but it is reality to have long-handled tools, to sit in a chair and weed your garden that way,” NLHEP’s Gretchen Lawrence says.

Support is one of the greatest benefits. The program provides a forum for talking about many taboo subjects, such as sexual and end-of-life issues.

Despite the benefits, Carlin estimates that less than 5 percent of COPD patients are offered rehab. He attributes the low statistic to lack of access and availability. “Medicare does not cover pulmonary rehab, and because of that, a lot of private insurers or the third-party payors don’t cover it as well,” he says.

“I think every respiratory patient needs to have access and have the ability to at least go through some sessions of pulmonary rehab because a lot of patients get really scared,” Caryn Plessinger, of Hub’s Home Oxygen, says. “They’re afraid to be active and they need to be active because their lungs are muscle. They need to exercise and they need to stay strong and keep their muscles strong. And I think sometimes they think, ‘Oh, I’m on oxygen now. I need to stay at home.’ And we want to change that.”

This article originally appeared in the Respiratory Management July/Aug 2007 issue of HME Business.