A simple and easy home-based pulmonary rehabilitation programme for patients with chronic lung diseases

To develop a simple and easy home-based pulmonary rehabilitation programme and investigate its effectiveness.

Patients with stable chronic lung disease were divided into a rehabilitation group (n = 25) and a control group (n = 18). Rehabilitation consisted of education and 12 weeks of enforced aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises. Aerobic exercise training was performed mostly by walking based on the functional capacity of the patients assessed by the maximal incremental exercise test. Patients visited hospital every two weeks for evaluation and a new exercise regimen.

Five patients dropped out of the rehabilitation group but three were due to development of unrelated diseases, five controls did not co-operate in the second evaluation. After 12 weeks of rehabilitation, exercise capacity (maximum work load and VO2max), exercise endurance, 6-minute walking distance, and quality of life measured by the St. George Respiratory Questionnaire had significantly improved in the rehabilitation group but not in the controls. At a follow-up evaluation one year after the rehabilitation, some exercise parameters were still significantly higher than baseline in the rehabilitation group.

We developed a simple home-based pulmonary rehabilitation programme, which seems to be clinically feasible and effective.