Pulmonary rehabilitation is a comprehensive program incorporating exercise training, breathing retraining, energy management, nutritional counseling, psychosocial interventions, and collaborative self-management. The outcomes of pulmonary rehabilitation include decreased shortness of breath, increased ability to perform activities, and improved quality of life. Exercise capacity . The intensive five day a week program incorporates exercise training using a cycle ergometer or treadmill. In addition, there was a lower heart rate at any given level of exercise suggesting improvement in cardiac function in patients with severe airflow limitation.
Functional capacity measured by the six-minute walk also improves following rehabilitation.
Quality of life . Quality of life measured by the widely used generic Health Status Index, SF-36, was assessed before and after our pulmonary rehabilitation program. The absence of correlation between improvements in quality of life and walk distance indicates that these measures are assessing different domains. Neuropsychological effects . Higher perceived difficulties were associated with lowered cognitive abilities in some domains.