How to institute pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

HAS produces recommendations and tools to facilitate their use by health professionals. The objective is to inform health professionals, patients and health care users of current best practices and care pathway with the aim of providing the best care at the best time according to the patient’s expectation.

Key points

• Pulmonary rehabilitation must be prescribed as soon as a patient presents with dyspnea, exercise intolerance or a decrease in daily activities despite optimized drug therapy, or after a stay in hospital on account of a COPD exacerbation;
• All health professionals are involved in the therapeutic education of the patient and his/her family. This requires an organisational team;
• Maintaining improvement in the long term is vital;
• Coordinated monitoring by primary care team is necessary at all theses stages.