Cambios en la tolerancia al ejercicio, disnea y calidad de vida a las 8 vs. 12 semanas de rehabilitación pulmonar en pacientes con EPOC

Abstract

Introduction In patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary rehabilitation reports improvements in exercise tolerance, quality of life and decrease in symptoms; however, few studies compare shorter and longer pulmonary rehabilitation programmes. The objective was to describe the benefits of PR in terms of exercise tolerance, perception of dyspnoea and quality of life, in patients with COPD attending a pulmonary rehabilitation programme for 8 weeks compared to those attending for 12 weeks in a third level institution in the city of Cali, Colombia. Methods Quasi-experimental study linking patients with COPD, 15 patients in the 8-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme and 15 patients in the 12-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme. Body mass index (BMI), distance covered in the 6-minute walk test (TC6M), quality of life CRQ-SAS questionnaire were assessed at the beginning and end of the programme. Results BMI did not show statistically significant changes in the groups, exercise tolerance showed statistically significant improvement in 12-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme (p<.05), the CRQ-SAS questionnaire evidences improvement in all domains, but there were no differences between both groups. Conclusions COPD patients, statistically significant improvement after the pulmonary rehabilitation programme in variables such as dyspnoea and quality of life; however, only the 12-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme group presented statistically significant improvements in the distance travelled of the TC6M compared to the 8-week pulmonary rehabilitation programme group.