Impact of Disease-Specific Fears on Pulmonary Rehabilitation Trajectories in Patients with COPD.

Disease-specific fears predict health status in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but their role in pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) remains poorly understood and especially longer-term evaluations are lacking. We therefore investigated changes in disease-specific fears over the course of PR and six months after PR, and investigated associations with PR outcomes (COPD assessment test (CAT) and St. Georges respiratory questionnaire (SGRQ)) in a subset of patients with COPD ( = 146) undergoing a 3-week inpatient PR program as part of the STAR study (Clinicaltrials.