COPD: Providing the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common disease associated with significant morbidity and mortality that is both preventable and treatable. However, a major challenge in recognizing, preventing, and treating COPD is understanding its complexity. While COPD has historically been characterized as a disease defined by airflow limitation, we now understand it as a multi-component disease with many clinical phenotypes, systemic manifestations, and associated co-morbidities.

Improving COPD Care in a Medically Underserved Primary Care Clinic: A Qualitative Study of Patient Perspectives.

We conducted a focus group study in an urban hospital-based primary care teaching clinic serving an indigent and Hispanic (predominantly Puerto Rican) population in New England in order to learn how patients with Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD) perceive their disease, how they experience their medical care, and the barriers they face managing their disease and following medical recommendations. The research team included medical doctors, nurses, a medical anthropologist, a clinical pharmacist, a hospital interpreter, and a systems analyst. Four focus groups were conducted in Spanish and English in April and May 2014.

Improving exercise tolerance and quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of mortality in the United States. Its symptoms, comorbidities, and sequelae also result in high morbidity and healthcare costs. The impact of progressive dyspnea, fatigue, exercise intolerance, and recurrent exacerbations in patients with COPD can be devastating to their quality of life.

Targeting the COPD exacerbation.

Exacerbations of COPD have a profound detrimental effect on the patient and impose a significant burden on healthcare resource utilization. Prevention and treatment of exacerbations are major objectives of the clinical management of COPD. For this approach to be successful, clinicians must combine both pharmacologic approaches and non-pharmacologic strategies aimed at improving the patient's disease management.

Clinical Competency Guidelines for Pulmonary Rehabilitation Professionals: American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Position Statement.

The article provides an outline of clinical competencies recommended for personnel providing comprehensive services in pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), complementing the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Guidelines for Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programs. Individuals wishing to provide PR services should possess a common core of professional and clinical competencies regardless of their academic discipline.

COPD and exercise: what's really important? A nursing perspective.

Numerous studies demonstrate the importance of exercise training to improve endurance in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and its positive effect on activities of daily living and quality of life. However, successful care of the individual with COPD also relies on recognizing that this person requires individualized care and non-pharmacologic modalities specific to their needs in order to cope with the various aspects of their disease. It is also important to note that improvement in quality of life is not necessarily related to improvement in exercise endurance alone.

Environmental tobacco smoke: respiratory and other health effects.

Involuntary exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a serious and entirely preventable public health hazard. It has become clear that ETS adversely affects the health of all who breathe its toxins. Independent of active smoking, ETS exposure is a modifiable risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Functional status and quality of life in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Exertional dyspnea often causes patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to unconsciously reduce their activities of daily living (ADLs) to reduce the intensity of their distress. The reduction in ADLs leads to deconditioning which, in turn, further increases dyspnea. Both dyspnea and fatigue are important factors affecting health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

Pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD.

Pulmonary rehabilitation is a therapeutic process, which entails taking a holistic approach to the welfare of the patient with chronic respiratory illness--most commonly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Pulmonary rehabilitation is considered essential throughout the lifetime management of patients with symptomatic chronic respiratory disease. It requires the coordinated action of a multidisciplinary healthcare team in order to deliver an individualised rehabilitation programme to best effect--incorporating multiple modalities, such as advice on smoking cessation, exercise training and patient self-management education, among others.