Chest
Clinical InvestigationsThe Effects of Short-term and Long-term Pulmonary Rehabilitation on Functional Capacity, Perceived Dyspnea, and Quality of Life
Section snippets
Participants
The subjects for this investigation consisted of 309 women and 281 men aged 20 to 93 years (mean [± SD] age, 66.7 ± 11.1 years) from seven North Carolina PR programs. The greatest number of subjects in this study came from hospitals in the greater Charlotte and Greensboro metropolitan areas. All patients had some form of restrictive, obstructive, or mixed lung disease. A majority of patients had COPD (92%), consisting primarily of emphysema, asthma, chronic bronchitis, or combinations of the
6MW Test
The 6MW distance (in feet) increased in men and women across programs (p < 0.001) following 12 weeks of PR (Table 1). While men walked further than women on both the initial and 12-week follow-up tests (p < 0.05), there were no interaction effects (p = 0.304) between genders as both improved similarly. The effect sizes for men and women were 0.47 and 0.54, respectively, indicating moderate clinical improvements in 6MW test performance after 12 weeks (men, 15%; women, 18%)
In the patients who
Discussion
This multiple-site study was designed to evaluate functional status and health-related QOL relationships in patients with chronic lung disease following both short-term and long-term supervised PR intervention. While the participating PR programs may have differed in staff and structure, their assessment measures were standardized for uniform outcome data tracking. Analyzing data in this fashion from several hospital outpatient facilities may offer a better look at the “real-life” benefits of
Conclusions
The process of measuring outcomes, benchmarking results, and using this information to verify the importance of PR intervention will be critical for the success of PR programs in the 21st century.60, 61, 62 This study from the NCCRA adds to the growing body of literature showing successful health outcomes following both short-term and long-term supervised PR. Based on data from this study and previous investigations,5, 6, 10, 50, 51, 52 it appears that supervised PR of up to at least 24 weeks
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the staff of the following North Carolina programs for taking the time and effort to measure, quantify, and submit data to the NCCRA Pulmonary Rehabilitation Registry for this ongoing investigation: Presbyterian Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program (Charlotte); Moses Cone Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program (Greensboro); Mercy South Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program (Pineville); Transylvania Community Hospital Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program (Brevard), Wake Forest/Baptist Hospital
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