A clinical education project for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (DPOC)

Introduction: The WHO estimates that COPD reaches 210 million people worldwide. Patients with COPD must have access to adequate information about their health condition, making the active participation in the management and treatment of their illness as possible. One project was developed in clinical education of the physiotherapy undergraduate course, to assess the impact of a home program. Objective: To evaluate the results of the intervention at home (educational approach). To enable the patient to deal with his health condition and make it autonomous in the control of COPD. Methods: A home program with 10 COPD patients was performed. The program was divided into 8 separate weekly sessions. The evaluation occurred before - and after the intervention (T0-T1). A form was applied to collect demographic and clinical data, the Modified British Medical Research Council Questionnaire, COPD Assessment Test and the London Chest ADL’s. Gas analyses were also carried out. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS, using the comparison of means and the non-parametric Wilcoxon test. Results: The mean scores of the MMRC, CAT and LCADL decreased from. However, only significant differences in relation to MMRC (p=0.021) and LCADL (p=0.014). Regarding the data obtained by gas analysis the average SaO2, pO2 and FO2Hb increased from T0 to T1, but none was significant. Conclusions: After domiciliary intervention patients with COPD felt especially improvements in functional terms and symptomatology. The results from blood gas analysis, are not sufficient to conclude that the intervention have a metabolic level results