Barriers to pulmonary rehabilitation adherence in patients with COPD : A descriptive literature review

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a common and difficult to cure disease, pulmonary rehabilitation is a beneficial intervention for it. However, the success rate of pulmonary rehabilitation largely depends on the patient's adherence, which often has many barriers.Aim: The aim of the literature review was to describe the barriers to pulmonary rehabilitation adherence in patients with COPD.Method: The study was a descriptive literature review. There were 3 qualitative research articles and 7 quantitative research articles in this literature review. These articles were searched in PubMed database, and authors did a narrative synthesis of the results.Results: The main factors affecting the adherence of patients with COPD were described, and they were mainly divided into four categories: barriers to pulmonary rehabilitation in human, environment, health and nursing. These barriers impeded patients' pulmonary rehabilitation and were detrimental to their physical health and high quality of life.Conclusions: The study briefly introduced the main barriers affecting the adherence of patients with COPD to pulmonary rehabilitation. Many of these barriers were uncontrollable in nature, but more efforts could be made to improve the scientific nature of pulmonary rehabilitation programs and the collaborative ability of professional teams to effectively help patients overcome these barriers.Keywords: Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive, Pulmonary rehabilitation, Patient adherenc