Getting Started

Aims & Guidelines

The primary goals of pulmonary rehabilitation in people with chronic lung disease are to:

• Increase exercise capacity
• Reduce the symptoms of dyspnoea and fatigue
• Increase physical activity and participation in everyday activities
• Improve quality of life
• Improve mood and motivation
• Improve adherence to recommended treatments
• Enhance participation in therapy decisions by building self-management capacity
• Reduce health care burden for patients, families and communities, including reduction in hospitalisations
• Improve survival

The structure and delivery of programs are diverse and dependent upon available resources, but the aims remain the same.

Although Pulmonary Rehabilitation is best delivered in centre-based setting, there are some emerging frameworks in place to deliver the service virtually.

• HomeBase Pulmonary Rehabilitation
• Telehealth Rehabilitation
• Face to Face rehabilitation via video conferencing

Guidelines

The Australian and New Zealand Pulmonary Rehabilitation Guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for the practice of pulmonary rehabilitation specific to Australian and New Zealand healthcare contexts. To access full guidelines or summarised version, visit the Lung Foundation Website.

A number of other pulmonary rehabilitation guidelines have been published such as the British Thoracic Society,² the American Thoracic Society(ATS),³the European Respiratory Society(ERS)⁴ and The Canadian Thoracic Society Guidelines⁵.

There have been two Cochrane Reviews evaluating pulmonary rehabilitation in terms of the effect of on quality of life and exercise capacity⁶ and the effect of on hospital readmissions after an exacerbation⁷.