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.
The objectives of this document are to enhance implementation, use, and delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation to suitable individuals worldwide.
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.
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.
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.
: This document provides clinical recommendations for the pharmacologic treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It represents a collaborative effort on the part of a panel of ...expert COPD clinicians and researchers along with a team of methodologists under the guidance of the American Thoracic Society.
: Comprehensive evidence syntheses were performed on all relevant studies that addressed the clinical questions and critical patient-centered outcomes agreed upon by the panel of experts. The evidence was appraised, rated, and graded, and recommendations were formulated using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation approach.
: After weighing the quality of evidence and balancing the desirable and undesirable effects, the guideline panel made the following recommendations:
) a strong recommendation for the use of long-acting β
-agonist (LABA)/long-acting muscarinic antagonist (LAMA) combination therapy over LABA or LAMA monotherapy in patients with COPD and dyspnea or exercise intolerance;
) a conditional recommendation for the use of triple therapy with inhaled corticosteroids (ICS)/LABA/LAMA over dual therapy with LABA/LAMA in patients with COPD and dyspnea or exercise intolerance who have experienced one or more exacerbations in the past year;
) a conditional recommendation for ICS withdrawal for patients with COPD receiving triple therapy (ICS/LABA/LAMA) if the patient has had no exacerbations in the past year;
) no recommendation for or against ICS as an additive therapy to long-acting bronchodilators in patients with COPD and blood eosinophilia, except for those patients with a history of one or more exacerbations in the past year requiring antibiotics or oral steroids or hospitalization, for whom ICS is conditionally recommended as an additive therapy;
) a conditional recommendation against the use of maintenance oral corticosteroids in patients with COPD and a history of severe and frequent exacerbations; and
) a conditional recommendation for opioid-based therapy in patients with COPD who experience advanced refractory dyspnea despite otherwise optimal therapy.
: The task force made recommendations regarding the pharmacologic treatment of COPD based on currently available evidence. Additional research in populations that are underrepresented in clinical trials is needed, including studies in patients with COPD 80 years of age and older, those with multiple chronic health conditions, and those with a codiagnosis of COPD and asthma.
Pulmonary rehabilitation is recognized as a core component of the management of individuals with chronic respiratory disease. Since the 2006 American Thoracic Society (ATS)/European Respiratory ...Society (ERS) Statement on Pulmonary Rehabilitation, there has been considerable growth in our knowledge of its efficacy and scope.
The purpose of this Statement is to update the 2006 document, including a new definition of pulmonary rehabilitation and highlighting key concepts and major advances in the field.
A multidisciplinary committee of experts representing the ATS Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly and the ERS Scientific Group 01.02, "Rehabilitation and Chronic Care," determined the overall scope of this update through group consensus. Focused literature reviews in key topic areas were conducted by committee members with relevant clinical and scientific expertise. The final content of this Statement was agreed on by all members.
An updated definition of pulmonary rehabilitation is proposed. New data are presented on the science and application of pulmonary rehabilitation, including its effectiveness in acutely ill individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and in individuals with other chronic respiratory diseases. The important role of pulmonary rehabilitation in chronic disease management is highlighted. In addition, the role of health behavior change in optimizing and maintaining benefits is discussed.
The considerable growth in the science and application of pulmonary rehabilitation since 2006 adds further support for its efficacy in a wide range of individuals with chronic respiratory disease.
Exercise limitation is a characteristic feature of chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD and is associated with poor outcomes including decreased functional status and health-related quality of ...life and increased mortality. The mechanisms responsible for exercise limitation are complex and include ventilatory limitation, cardiovascular impairment, and skeletal muscle dysfunction. In addition, comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease are common in this population and can further impact exercise capacity. Exercise training, a core component of pulmonary rehabilitation, improves exercise capacity by addressing many of these mechanisms that, in turn, can potentially slow the decline of lung function, reduce the frequency of exacerbations, and decrease mortality. This article will discuss the mechanisms of exercise limitation in individuals with chronic respiratory disease, primarily focusing on COPD, and provide an overview of exercise training and its benefits in this patient population.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a highly prevalent chronic illness with significant associated morbidity and mortality. Currently, the third leading cause of death worldwide, it ...places a considerable burden on the patient, family, and society owing to a progressive decline in health status, increases in disability-associated life-years and years of life lost, and high healthcare utilization. The high prevalence of COPD even in high-income nations, despite the presence of robust healthcare systems, suggests that current services to address this disease remain inadequate. Major strengths of the current study are the large cohort of individuals with COPD, the accuracy of data obtained regarding readmissions and death, and the real-world setting in which data were collected from multiple hospital settings across the United States. A previous meta-analysis relied on small randomized controlled trials, in which moderate quality evidence also showed that PR reduced hospital readmissions; however, the results were heterogenous, with four of eight studies showing large reductions in risk of hospital admission and four studies showing no effect.
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.
Medical management of a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient must incorporate a broadened and holistic approach to achieve optimal outcomes. This is best achieved with integrated ...care, which is based on the chronic care model of disease management, proactively addressing the patient’s unique medical, social, psychological, and cognitive needs along the trajectory of the disease. While conceptually appealing, integrated care requires not only a different approach to disease management, but considerably more health care resources. One potential way to reduce this burden of care is telemedicine: technology that allows for the bidirectional transfer of important clinical information between the patient and health care providers across distances. This not only makes medical services more accessible; it may also enhance the efficiency of delivery and quality of care. Telemedicine includes distinct, often overlapping interventions, including telecommunication (enhancing lines of communication), telemonitoring (symptom reporting or the transfer of physiological data to health care providers), physical activity monitoring and feedback to the patient and provider, remote decision support systems (identifying “red flags,” such as the onset of an exacerbation), tele-consultation (directing assessment and care from a distance), tele-education (through web-based educational or self-management platforms), tele-coaching, and tele-rehabilitation (providing educational material, exercise training, or even total pulmonary rehabilitation at a distance when standard, center-based rehabilitation is not feasible). While the above components of telemedicine are conceptually appealing, many have had inconsistent results in scientific trials. Interventions with more consistently favorable results include those potentially modifying physical activity, non-invasive ventilator management, and tele-rehabilitation. More inconsistent results in other telemedicine interventions do not necessarily mean they are ineffective; rather, more data on refining the techniques may be necessary. Until more outcome data are available clinicians should resist being caught up in novel technologies simply because they are new.
Background Lung cancer screening recommendations have been developed, but none are focused on veterans. We report the results of the lung cancer screening program at our Veterans Affairs medical ...center and compare them with historic results. Methods All veterans between 55 and 74 years who were current smokers or quit within the past 15 years and had at least a 30-pack-year smoking history were invited to receive an annual low-dose chest CT scan beginning in December 2013. Demographics, CT scan results, and pathologic data of screened patients were recorded retrospectively. Overall results during the screening period were compared with results in veterans who received diagnoses from January 2011 to December 2013 (prescreening period). Results From December 2013 through December 2014 (screening period), 1,832 patients obtained a screening CT scan. Their mean age was 65 years. A lung nodule was present in 439 of 1,832 patients (24%). Lung cancer was diagnosed in 55 of 1,832 screened patients (3.0%). During the prescreening period, 37% of every lung cancer detected at our center (30 of 82) was stage I or stage II. After implementation of the screening program that percentage rose to 60% (52 of 87; P < .01). During the screening period, 55 of the 87 diagnosed lung cancers (63%) were detected through the screening program. The number of lung cancers detected per month rose from 2.4 to 6.7 after implementation of the screening program ( P < .01). Conclusions Implementation of lung cancer screening in the veteran population leads to detection of an increased number and proportion of early-stage lung cancers. Lung cancer screening in veterans may also increase the rate of lung cancer diagnoses in the immediate postimplementation period.
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