Awareness about disease and pulmonary rehabilitation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A survey study

Abstract

Purpose: Superiority of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) in patients with COPD have been entered the majorguidelines of the disease and become gold standard of care in the management of COPD. Our aim is to evaluatethe patients’ awareness about their own illness and PR which supports behavioral interventions by encouragingexercise training, cooperative self-management depending on the patients themselves.Materials and methods: The study was included 200 patients. Patients who are competent enough tocomplete the questionnaire and diagnosed as COPD according to Global Inıtıatıve for Chronic ObstructiveLung Disease(GOLD) criteria and at least 1 year on follow patients enrolled in the study. Questionnaire whichis employed in our study is developed by a review of the current literature and consist of 3 parts. First part aimsto investigate socio-demographics like age, gender, education and whereabouts. Second part (questions 1-9)evaluate the knowledge and awareness of COPD and 3rd part (10-22) investigate the awareness of PR.Results: Among the patients 93% (n=186) were male and 7% (n=14) were female. Mean age was 65.11±10.00years. Mean duration of the disease was 7.8±6.69 years. Correct answer rates to the questions “is there anothertreatment modality for COPD other than medication” and “have you ever heard a treatment named pulmonaryrehabilitation” were 14.5% and 7.5%, respectively.Conclusion: We found that the awareness of pulmonary rehabilitation is very low. Therefore, in our opinion itis essential to find out new methods, novel strategies to increase the awareness of pulmonary rehabilitation inCOPD patients.