Health Beat: Pulmonary rehab for COPD
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Forty-five years of smoking have taken their toll on Harold Ridgeway’s health. At 76, he is learning to live with COPD — an incurable disease found mostly in smokers. Symptoms are similar to bronchitis, and even though they usually worsen over time, Ridgeway is actually starting to feel better. “I probably feel a whole lot younger than my 76 years old,” Ridgeway said. That’s because he was one of 14 patients who took part in a University of Alabama research project to improve symptoms of COPD.
“We thought, since we know that rehab and exercise improves functionality of the patients and reduces readmission rates, let’s take the exercise program to the patients’ houses and try to make a difference there,” said Dr. Surya Bhatt, a pulmonologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Doctors sent patients home with a smartphone. They used Skype to coach them through simple pulmonary exercises while monitoring their blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen saturation, and they did this for one hour a day, three days a week, for three months. “You can’t quit like you could if you were doing it on your own and got tired,” Ridgeway said.
“They have to do this two to three times a week, so for a majority of our patients, that’s a huge time and financial constraint, which we can easily overcome by having them do this at home,” Bhatt explained. In general, about 20 percent of people with COPD are readmitted to a hospital within 30 days, but that wasn’t the case for any of the 14 patients in the study who, like Ridgeway, saw significant improvement in their symptoms. Bhatt is hoping to expand the study known as “The COPD get with it” program and enroll more patients. He said two-thirds of the health care costs of COPD result from hospitalizations, so reducing the number of re-admissions could save patients and the health care system a lot of money.
