Living with lung disease such as COPD, cystic fibrosis or pulmonary hypertension can seriously impact your quality of life. Chronic shortness of breath can make it impossible to exercise, and even ordinary daily activities can be difficult to accomplish.
If you are living with a chronic lung condition, pulmonary rehabilitation can significantly improve your quality of life.
Although it doesn’t treat the cause of your breathing problems, pulmonary rehabilitation, or PR, uses both exercise and education to help you breathe more effectively, manage chronic lung problems and enable you to enjoy more activities. Combined with medication, PR can significantly improve your quality of life.
Through our individualized program of education and exercise classes, Altru’s Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program will help you live better with lung disease.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation is helpful for any condition that affects the function of the lungs. This includes conditions caused by long-term exposure to irritants, such as COPD and emphysema; conditions related to inflammation and mucus, such as chronic bronchitis and cystic fibrosis; or conditions affecting the muscles of breathing, such as muscular dystrophy.
Pulmonary Rehabilitation Sessions
At Altru’s Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program, you’ll attend a series of two sessions a week for 10 to 12 weeks. In these sessions, you’ll learn personalized training and exercises to help you better manage lung disease. Your family members are encouraged to attend sessions for no extra charge, enabling them to learn about the disease and support your exercise program. Once you’ve completed the initial series of sessions, a maintenance program will enable you to continue exercises at home.
Breathing Retraining/Ventilatory Muscle Training
Breathing retraining teaches you efficient ways to use your respiratory muscles. It’s especially helpful for people with muscular conditions that affect breathing.
Exercise Training
In your PR exercise sessions, you’ll use ordinary exercise equipment such as treadmills, bikes and step machines with the supervision of a pulmonary rehabilitation specialist. Your heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen level will be closely monitored throughout sessions. Your therapist will instruct you on techniques to improve your lung function during exercise.
Disease Education
PR also includes a disease education component to give you a comprehensive understanding of lung disease management. Topics include nutrition, medication, stress management, emergency management, work tasks and home exercises.
Benefits of Pulmonary Rehabilitation
Most patients experience significant improvements in quality of life after going through our pulmonary rehabilitation program. PR will likely enhance your ability to perform daily tasks, increase your exercise tolerance, reduce your future hospitalizations and provide relief from the most severe symptoms of respiratory disease.
The education in this program will also enable you to better understand your medication regime, effectively use equipment for managing your disease and help your friends and family better understand your disease. For many participants, the program improves self-esteem and self-confidence, enabling you to return to activities you enjoyed or even return to work. PR can also enhance survival for some types of disease.
To learn more about our pulmonary rehabilitation program and schedule your appointment, call 701.780.1528 or 800.732.4277, ext. 1528.
