Background and aims: There is limited experience with implementation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) rehabilitation in primary care settings. We aimed to evaluate the implementation of a COPD rehabilitation programme in a primary care setting and compare the effects with those obtained in a secondary health-care setting.
Materials and methods: The same outpatient multidisciplinary 7-week rehabilitation programme was implemented in a primary (day care nursery) and a secondary (hospital) health-care setting. Disease-specific quality of life (QoL) and endurance shuttle walking time (ESWT) was assessed at the start and end of the programme. Additionally, QoL was assessed again at a 3-months follow-up.
Results: No serious problems or adverse events were encountered during the training/rehabilitation sessions. A total of 48 patients (81.3%) and 75 patients (84.2%) completed the 7-week rehabilitation programme in the primary and secondary settings, respectively. Within both centres, we found statistically significant improvements of ESWT and total St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire score. The improvement of ESWT was significantly greater in the secondary care setting than in the primary care setting.
Conclusions: we found that it was possible to implement a COPD rehabilitation programme in a Danish primary care setting. In this non-randomised study, improvements of QoL and ESWT obtained in the primary care setting were reasonably similar to those obtained in the secondary care setting.
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.