Pulmonary Rehabilitation

The aim of pulmonary rehabilitation is to optimise a patient's quality of life by maintaining maximum levels of function and independence.

Physiotherapist, Annabelle King encourages anyone with LAM to do Pulmonary Rehabilitation. She says it is a very useful tool and treatment, while we wait for the cure!

Pulmonary rehabilitation involves:

• relieving dyspnoea (shortness of breath) by learning relaxed breathing and positioning techniques.
• increasing muscle strength and the endurance of muscles used for breathing and peripheral muscles. eg. arms and legs
• promoting a long term commitment to exercise.

Exercise makes muscles more efficient and strong. Exercising and conditioning muscles also results in a lower oxygen requirement for the same tasks. That is, with exercise training the arms and legs can do more work for the same amount of breathing. Rather than a task's requiring 70-80% effort, the same task can be completed at only 50-60% effort. This can add significantly to quality of life.

The type of exercise can be focused on either predominantly strength training or endurance training. If people find that shortness of breath is their limiting factor, exercise geared towards improving endurance is most helpful. For people who find muscle fatigue to be their limiting factor, strength training is beneficial.

For endurance training people should exercise at around 70-80% of their VO2 max, which can be calculated by their physio or exercise physiologist, or at the level of "moderately breathless" on the Borg Dyspnoea Scale below.

People can be referred to the physiotherapy department in public and some private hospitals. Following a full evaluation, a pulmonary rehabilitation program can be tailored specifically to individual requirements.

Borg Dyspnoea Scale (modified)

This scale asks you to rate the difficulty of your breathing between #0, when breathing causes no difficulty at all, through to #10 when breathing difficulty is extreme. Ask yourself how much difficulty your breathing is causing you before you start to exert yourself.

Level of difficulty of breathing

Helpful link: http://www.pulmonaryrehab.com.au