The REHAB2LIFE study, effectiveness of a maintenance pulmonary rehabilitation programme: Preliminary results

Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is the bedrock of non-pharmacological treatment for people with COPD. Its key elements are exercise training, patient-directed education, smoking cessation support, disease self-management, and behaviour change recommended as mandatory in standard COPD PR programs. Nonetheless, unless the patient changes his behaviour, the benefits of PR programmes will decline in six to twelve months after finishing the programme. Therefore, maintenance programmes are considered a possible way to address the problem of PR programmes’ effect loss through time. Community care units can provide multidisciplinary care in the current Portuguese primary health care context, where rehabilitation nurses prescribe and deliver PR programmes focused on developing competencies to self-manage the disease. This study aims to test the effectiveness of a 12-month home-based PR programme compared to usual care through a single-blind randomised controlled trial with two parallel groups. The Rehab2Life programme includes two distinct phases, the first in which an 8-week PR programme will be delivered to both groups and the second phase, where a PR maintenance programme after the initial eight weeks will be delivered to the intervention group. Preliminary results suggest that this programme can have a role in maintaining the health-related quality of life, disease impact and physical activity.