Patient adherence in COPD Bourbeau, J; Bartlett, S J
Thorax,
09/2008, Volume:
63, Issue:
9
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Open access
Patient adherence to treatment in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is essential to optimise disease management. As with other chronic diseases, poor adherence is common and results in ...increased rates of morbidity, healthcare expenditures, hospitalisations and possibly mortality, as well as unnecessary escalation of therapy and reduced quality of life. Examples include overuse, underuse, and alteration of schedule and doses of medication, continued smoking and lack of exercise. Adherence is affected by patients’ perception of their disease, type of treatment or medication, the quality of patient provider communication and the social environment. Patients are more likely to adhere to treatment when they believe it will improve disease management or control, or anticipate serious consequences related to non-adherence. Providers play a critical role in helping patients understand the nature of the disease, potential benefits of treatment, addressing concerns regarding potential adverse effects and events, and encouraging patients to develop self-management skills. For clinicians, it is important to explore patients’ beliefs and concerns about the safety and benefits of the treatment, as many patients harbour unspoken fears. Complex regimens and polytherapy also contribute to suboptimal adherence. This review addresses adherence related issues in COPD, assesses current efforts to improve adherence and highlights opportunities to improve adherence for both providers and patients.
BackgroundThere is limited data on the risk factors and phenotypical characteristics associated with spirometrically confirmed COPD in never-smokers in the general population.AimsTo compare the ...characteristics associated with COPD by gender and by severity of airway obstruction in never-smokers and in ever-smokers.MethodWe analysed the data from 5176 adults aged 40 years and older who participated in the initial cross-sectional phase of the population-based, prospective, multisite Canadian Cohort of Obstructive Lung Disease study. Never-smokers were defined as those with a lifetime exposure of <1/20 pack year. Logistic regressions were constructed to evaluate associations for ‘mild’ and ‘moderate-severe’ COPD defined by FEV1/FVC <5th centile (lower limits of normal). Analyses were performed using SAS V.9.1 (SAS Institute, Cary, North Carolina, USA).ResultsThe prevalence of COPD (FEV1/FVC<lower limits of normal) in never-smokers was 6.4%, constituting 27% of all COPD subjects. The common independent predictors of COPD in never-smokers and ever-smokers were older age, self reported asthma and lower education. In never-smokers a history of hospitalisation in childhood for respiratory illness was discriminative, while exposure to passive smoke and biomass fuel for heating were discriminative for women. COPD in never-smokers and ever-smokers was characterised by increased respiratory symptoms, ‘respiratory exacerbation’ events and increased residual volume/total lung capacity, but only smokers had reduced DLCO/Va and emphysema on chest CT scans.ConclusionsThe study confirmed the substantial burden of COPD among never-smokers, defined the common and gender-specific risk factors for COPD in never-smokers and provided early insight into potential phenotypical differences in COPD between lifelong never-smokers and ever-smokers.Trial registration numberNCT00920348 (ClinicalTrials.gov); study ID number: IRO-93326.
A truly successful pulmonary rehabilitation entails implementing physical activity maintenance. This article reviews the current knowledge on pulmonary rehabilitation and the expected benefits, the ...setting, the relationship between self-management and pulmonary rehabilitation, in order to develop and implement clinically-effective physical activity maintenance interventions. The effectiveness of pulmonary rehabilitation is well-established. However, access to pulmonary rehabilitation is limited. Home-based pulmonary rehabilitation has been shown to be an effective, equivalent alternative to outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD patients. The opportunity to offer different pulmonary rehabilitation settings tailored to individual needs should improve accessibility to this intervention. Sustained long-term physical activity remains the most important challenge for COPD patients. We need a dependable system of coordinated health care interventions and communication, and components that include self-management support. Self-management should be an integrated part of pulmonary rehabilitation and remain long after the pulmonary rehabilitation is completed. By early identification of patients who may have difficulty maintaining exercise and implementing appropriate self-management interventions during and after the rehabilitation program, it may be possible to promote better long-term involvement in physical activity. Pulmonary rehabilitation should not stand alone; the best program is that which can be maintained to translate into a continuous increase in the activities of daily living. Future research should evaluate the effect of self-management interventions combined with pulmonary rehabilitation to improve long-term activity and exercise maintenance.
Comprehensive Self-Management Strategies Bourbeau, J; Lavoie, K L; Sedeno, M
Seminars in respiratory and critical care medicine,
08/2015, Volume:
36, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In this article, we provide a review of the literature on self-management interventions and we are giving some thought to how, when, and by whom they should be offered to patients. The present ...literature based on randomized clinical trials has demonstrated benefits (reduced hospital admissions and improved health status) for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients undergoing self-management interventions, although there are still problems with the heterogeneity among interventions, study populations, follow-up time, and outcome measures that make generalization difficult in real life. Key to the success, self-management intervention has to target behavior change. Proper self-management support is a basic prerequisite, for example, techniques and skills used by health care providers "case manager" to instrument patients with the knowledge, confidence, and skills required to effectively self-manage their disease. To improve health behaviors and engagement in self-management, self-management interventions need to target enhancing intrinsic motivation to change. This will best be done using client-centered communication (motivational communication) that encourages patients to express what intrinsically motivates them (e.g., consistent with their values or life goals) to adopt certain health behavior, with the goal of helping them overcome their ambivalence about change. Finally, if we want to be able to design and implement self-management interventions that are integrated, coherent, and have a strong likelihood of success, we need to take a more careful look and give more attention at the case manager, the patient (patient evaluation), and the quality assurance.
Rationale Exacerbations of COPD are defined clinically by worsening of chronic respiratory symptoms. Chronic respiratory symptoms are common in the general population. There are no data on the ...frequency of exacerbation-like events in individuals without spirometric evidence of COPD. Aims To determine the occurrence of ‘exacerbation-like’ events in individuals without airflow limitation, their associated risk factors, healthcare utilisation and social impacts. Method We analysed the cross-sectional data from 5176 people aged 40 years and older who participated in a multisite, population-based study on lung health. The study cohort was stratified into spirometrically defined COPD (post-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC < 0.7) and non-COPD (post bronchodilator FEV1/FVC ≥ 0.7 and without self-reported doctor diagnosis of airway diseases) subgroups and then into those with and without respiratory ‘exacerbation-like’ events in the past year. Results Individuals without COPD had half the frequency of ‘exacerbation-like’ events compared with those with COPD. In the non-COPD group, the independent associations with ‘exacerbations’ included female gender, presence of wheezing, the use of respiratory medications and self-perceived poor health. In the non-COPD group, those with exacerbations were more likely than those without exacerbations to have poorer health-related quality of life (12-item Short-Form Health Survey), miss social activities (58.5% vs 18.8%), miss work for income (41.5% vs 17.3%) and miss housework (55.6% vs 16.5%), p<0.01 to <0.0001. Conclusions Events similar to exacerbations of COPD can occur in individuals without COPD or asthma and are associated with significant health and socioeconomic outcomes. They increase the respiratory burden in the community and may contribute to the false-positive diagnosis of asthma or COPD.
Unreported chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations are common, but their intermediate-to-long-term impacts on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are unknown. The aim of the ...present study was to examine the impact of unreported exacerbations on HRQoL at 1 yr. A multicentric prospective cohort study in 491 COPD patients was conducted in China. HRQoL was measured using the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ). Other measurements included sociodemographic, clinical, psychosocial and treatment profiles. Patients were monitored monthly for 12 months to document exacerbations (at least one symptom worsening for > or =48 h). Patients were categorised into six groups: no exacerbation, one unreported exacerbation only, more than one unreported exacerbation only, one reported exacerbation only, more than one reported exacerbation only, and both unreported and reported exacerbations. Generalised estimating equations were used to estimate the adjusted associations between exacerbations and HRQoL change. A total of 466 unreported and 410 reported exacerbations were recorded. Compared with patients with no exacerbations, the change in SGRQ total score was similar amongst patients with one unreported exacerbation (adjusted mean change 1.22 points (95% CI -4.05-6.48)), but significantly worse among patients with more than one unreported exacerbation (4.61 (95% CI 0.09-9.13)). Development and evaluation of self-management programmes emphasising early recognition of exacerbations and consequent action appear to be warranted.
Kinesthesia is the sense of limb movement. It is fundamental to efficient motor control, yet its neurophysiological components remain poorly understood. The contributions of primary muscle spindles ...and cutaneous afferents to the kinesthetic sense have been well studied; however, potential contributions from muscle sensory group responses that are different than the muscle spindles have not been ruled out. Electrophysiological recordings in peripheral nerves and brains of male Sprague Dawley rats with a degloved forelimb preparation provide evidence of a rapidly adapting muscle sensory group response that overlaps with vibratory inputs known to generate illusionary perceptions of limb movement in humans (kinesthetic illusion). This group was characteristically distinct from type Ia muscle spindle fibers, the receptor historically attributed to limb movement sensation, suggesting that type Ia muscle spindle fibers may not be the sole carrier of kinesthetic information. The sensory-neural structure of muscles is complex and there are a number of possible sources for this response group; with Golgi tendon organs being the most likely candidate. The rapidly adapting muscle sensory group response projected to proprioceptive brain regions, the rodent homolog of cortical area 3a and the second somatosensory area (S2), with similar adaption and frequency response profiles between the brain and peripheral nerves. Their representational organization was muscle-specific (myocentric) and magnified for proximal and multi-articulate limb joints. Projection to proprioceptive brain areas, myocentric representational magnification of muscles prone to movement error, overlap with illusionary vibrational input, and resonant frequencies of volitional motor unit contraction suggest that this group response may be involved with limb movement processing.
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