[An evaluation of a rehabilitation program for patients with chronic obstructive lung disease]

Rehabilitation programmes for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases are established in many countries. In this paper a new rehabilitation programme at Ullevål University Hospital is described and evaluated. We compared patients' (N = 80) use of hospital inpatient services the year before and the year after attending a rehabilitation course. We also compared patients' self-assessed health status before and six and 12 months after rehabilitation using the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale. The percentage of patients needing hospitalization per year was reduced from 45% before the programme to 22% afterwards. There was no change in the total number of hospitalizations or in the number of days spent in hospital. Self-assessed health status had improved. The results are in accordance with reports from similar rehabilitation programmes in other countries.