These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Maintenance after pulmonary rehabilitation in chronic lung disease: a randomized trial.
    Author: Ries AL, Kaplan RM, Myers R, Prewitt LM.
    Journal: Am J Respir Crit Care Med; 2003 Mar 15; 167(6):880-8. PubMed ID: 12505859.
    Abstract:
    Pulmonary rehabilitation is beneficial for patients with chronic lung disease. However, long-term maintenance has been difficult to achieve after short-term treatment. We evaluated a telephone-based maintenance program after pulmonary rehabilitation in 172 patients with chronic lung disease recruited from pulmonary rehabilitation graduates. Subjects were randomly assigned to a 12-month maintenance intervention with weekly telephone contacts and monthly supervised reinforcement sessions (n = 87) or standard care (n = 85) and followed for 24 months. Except for a slight imbalance between sexes, experimental and control groups were equivalent at baseline and showed similar improvements after rehabilitation. During the 12-month intervention, exercise tolerance (maximum treadmill workload and 6-minute walk distance) and overall health status ratings were better maintained in the experimental group together with a reduction in hospital days. There were no group differences for other measures of pulmonary function, dyspnea, self-efficacy, generic and disease-specific quality of life, and health care use. By 24 months, there were no significant group differences. Patients returned to levels close to but above prerehabilitation measures. We conclude that a maintenance program of weekly telephone calls and monthly supervised sessions produced only modest improvements in the maintenance of benefits after pulmonary rehabilitation.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]