Does Pulmonary Rehabilitation improve people’s experience of living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease? A Retrospective Case Note Review

Introduction: Evidence suggests pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has the potential to improve people9s experiences of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (De Sousa Pinto et al., 2013). There have been no previous studies investigating the impact of PR on people’s experience of living with COPD. The COPD Patient Reported Experience Measure (PREM)-9 is a new and validated PREM (Hodson et al., 2014). Aim: To measure the impact of an 8 week PR programme on the people9s experience of living with COPD. Method: A retrospective notes review of patients with COPD who completed the City and Hackney PR service (CHPR) was undertaken. Statistical analysis compared the pre and post scores of the COPD PREM-9 and was also used to analyse the correlation between the pre and post scores of the COPD PREM 9 against the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Results: Between June 2015 and May 2016, 36 patients completed the CHPR service. A statistically significant decrease in the mean pre 20.8±8.43 to post 14.72±10.59 COPD PREM 9 score (p=0.002) (95% CI: 2.08 to 8.64) was demonstrated. Between outcome measures, there was a moderate positive correlation between the COPD PREM 9 and pre and post scores for the CAT (r=0.48, r=0.40), HADS anxiety domain (r=0.44. r=0.40) and pre HADs depression domain (r=0.46). Conclusion: The CHPR programme demonstrated an improvement in the experience of people living with COPD measured by the COPD PREM-9. An association between patient experience, symptom burden and psychological well-being was also demonstrated.