Community COPD rehabilitation

Released 01/03/2010

Researchers find community services effective, but not necessarily cheaper

Community-based pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD is as effective as hospital-based services, according to NHS researchers.

Rehabilitation involves education and supervised exercises which can improve lung function and quality of life for patients with COPD.

When these treatments are offered in hospitals, their benefits cab be progressively lost once patients finish a course.

Researchers from the National Institute for Health Research's health technology assessment programme compared hospital and community-based programmes offered to 240 patients with COPD. There were no significant differences between the groups in improvements in exercise capacity.

"A community-based programme could potentially produce a change in lifestyle and more sustained benefits," lead researcher Dr Rod Lawson said.

However, Dr Lawson and his team did not find any evidence that community provision of pulmonary rehabilitation was more cost-effective than hospital provision. But They said the deciding factor in commissioning should be increasing uptake of the services to improve public health.

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