Home-based exercise training as maintenance after outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation.

Background: Pulmonary rehabilitation is successful in improving exercise capacity and quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, training effects diminish over time.

Objectives: We evaluated the effects of simple, daily, structured, self-monitored, home-based exercise training for patients with moderate COPD after a 3-week outpatient rehabilitation.

Exercise training raises daily activity stronger than predicted from exercise capacity in patients with COPD.

The 6-min walking (6MWD) and 6-min treadmill distance (6MTD) are often used as measures of exercise performance in patients with COPD. The aim of our study was to assess their relationship to daily activity in the course of an exercise training program. Eighty-eight patients with stable COPD (71m/17f; mean +/- SD age, 60 +/-8 year; FEV1, 43+/-14% pred) were recruited, 66 of whom performed a hospital-based 10-day walking training, whereas 22 were treated as control.

Measurement of agreement on health-related quality of life changes in response to respiratory rehabilitation by patients and physicians--a prospective study.

Introduction: To provide optimal care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease physicians need to understand if their patients benefit from an intervention. The objective of this study was to assess agreement between patients and physicians on health-related quality of life (HRQL) changes in response to respiratory rehabilitation and to explore sources for disagreement.

Methods: Sixty-one patients rated their health states on a validated preference-based instrument, the feeling thermometer (FT).

Self-administration and standardisation of the chronic respiratory questionnaire: a randomised trial in three German-speaking countries.

The chronic respiratory questionnaire (CRQ) has demonstrated excellent measurement properties in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but in its original form it is limited by the requirement for interviewer-administration and the individualised dyspnoea questions. The objective of this randomised trial was to examine the evaluative properties of the interviewer and self-administered German CRQ as well as of a standardised CRQ dyspnoea domain. In a multinational trial we randomly allocated 71 patients with COPD to complete the interviewer administered CRQ (CRQ-IA) or the self-administered CRQ (CRQ-SA) and other validation measures at the beginning and end of a respiratory rehabilitation program.

Self-administration and interviewer-administration of the German Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire: instrument development and assessment of validity and reliability in two randomised studies.

Background: Assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQL) is important in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite the high prevalence of COPD in Germany, Switzerland and Austria there is no validated disease-specific instrument available. The objective of this study was to translate the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ), one of the most widely used respiratory HRQL questionnaires, into German, develop an interviewer- and self-administered version including both standardised and individualised dyspnoea questions, and validate these versions in two randomised studies.