Treat the lungs, fool the brain and appease the mind: towards holistic care of patients who suffer from chronic respiratory diseases

In healthy people, breathing is the most natural thing in the world. No need to think about it. No need to be concerned about it. It is not even the object of conscious perception. But when breathing becomes difficult, when it produces suffering, nothing else mattersa. Life discolours and shrinks around an act of breathing that has become elusive and uncertain, but pervasive. Disability ensues, which adds "a variety of adverse psychosocial, spiritual, or other consequences" to the respiratory-related physical limitations [1]. Respiratory suffering, be it called dyspnoea, breathlessness or by any other name, is therefore a major (and probably often the main) driver of impaired quality of life in patients afflicted with chronic respiratory diseases (and also cardiac diseases, neuromuscular diseases and severe obesity). To put things more bluntly, not being able to breathe freely is probably the worst thing that can happen to a human being. Dyspnoea has long been compared to pain [2] and has a lot of neurophysiological similarities with it [3, 4]. Yet in many ways dyspnoea is probably worse than pain. Indeed, acute dyspnoea goes hand in hand with fear, the fear of dying, which is not systematically the case with pain. And, not being a universal experience like pain, dyspnoea might be less susceptible than pain to induce reactions and empathy from those who witness it. Trained healthcare professionals dealing with respiratory distress on a daily basis fail to correctly evaluate t...
Source: European Respiratory Journal - Category: Respiratory Medicine Authors: Tags: COPD and smoking Editorials Source Type: research