People are frightened that the next episode of breathlessness might finish them.
- Morag Farquhar
We all feel breathless from time to time: we’ve run for the bus, we’ve climbed a steep hill, we’ve cycled quickly to a meeting we’re late for. For some people, however, even the smallest of exertions – walking to the bathroom, getting dressed, even talking – can bring on a shortness of breath.
Daily, long term breathlessness is almost certainly a sign of an underlying, and often serious and advanced, condition such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which causes inflammation of the lungs. It can also occur in some advanced cancers. Both are conditions that cannot be cured, only managed.
“There’s been lots of research done into symptoms of advanced disease such as pain and there are good treatments – both pharmacological and non-pharmacological – but it’s a different situation with breathlessness,” says Dr Morag Farquhar from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge.
For several years now Farquhar has been involved with the Breathlessness Intervention Service (BIS), set up by Dr Sara Booth at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge who, importantly, saw the need to formally evaluate the service.
Unusually for an outpatient service, the service is often delivered in patients’ homes. “A lot of these people are too breathless to leave the house,” explains Farquhar. There is another, important reason why it is beneficial to visit patients in their own home, and that is to see the patient in their own environment, so that the intervention – advice and treatment – can be tailored specifically to their circumstances.
“BIS is what’s known as a ‘complex intervention’, one that has a number of different components, often delivered by a number of different healthcare professionals,” says Farquhar, who has been involved in developing and evaluating the service in collaboration with Booth, with funding from the National Institute of Health Research, Macmillan Cancer Support and the Gatsby Foundation.
Read the full story
Image: Dandelion clock (cropped)
Credit: Harry (Howard) Potts
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
____________________________________________