ABSTRACT
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic respiratory diseases are associated with significant extrapulmonary manifestations and symptoms that are not wholly captured by lung function parameters. The measurement of health status allows a standardized way of quantifying symptom burden and the effects of disease on patients’ wellbeing. Many well-validated and responsive health status questionnaires have been developed for COPD and other respiratory disorders and are increasingly used in routine clinical practice as part of multidimensional assessment, monitoring and management. The health status instruments most commonly evaluated in the pulmonary rehabilitation setting are the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire and the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire. Briefer questionnaires, including the COPD Assessment Test and the Clinical COPD Questionnaire, are becoming increasingly popular. Recent Cochrane reviews evaluating pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with stable COPD and following a hospital admission for a COPD exacerbation have demonstrated statistically and clinically significant improvements in health status following a programme of rehabilitation. Similar results have also been reported in other chronic respiratory diseases including interstitial lung disease and bronchiectasis. Furthermore, in patients with COPD, the improvement in health status is noticeably greater with pulmonary rehabilitation than with pharmacological interventions such as bronchodilators.
