Survival

Abstract

Several factors have been shown to be related to the survival of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease including forced expiratory volume in one second and O2 tension and CO2 tension in arterial blood, the level of pulmonary arterial pressure and nutritional status. Pulmonary rehabilitation has been shown to be effective in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in terms of improvement in exercise capacity, quality of life. However, there is relatively little data on the effect of pulmonary rehabilitation and survival. This data, however, does support the idea that pulmonary rehabilitation may produce a positive effect on survival. Further studies are required to confirm the benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation on survival.