Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program

The Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program at Mayo Clinic is a multi-disciplinary intervention for patients with chronic pulmonary disease. The goals of the program are to improve the quality of life of such patients by providing a better understanding of the underlying disease process, developing methods to cope with disease, and helping promote and maintain improvements in physical abilities.

The program has numerous components, but these may be broadly divided into exercise training and education. Any individual with chronic pulmonary disease that impairs functional status and/or quality of life is a potential candidate, and patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, pulmonary fibrosis or neuromuscular disease may all benefit from participation. It is also a vital component of lung transplantation programs.

The typical length of a Pulmonary Rehabilitation program is six to 10 weeks, but for those patients not able to commit to that length of stay in Rochester, we offer the Quick Start option. This is a two-day program that includes all of the educational components along with a minimum of two aerobic training sessions. Then, the patients are connected to a health facility in or near the area in which they live where the remainder of the program can be completed. The local facility is provided with specific guidelines for the patient and, in turn, we require that the facility provide us with summaries of the patient’s progress on a regular basis.