People who have advanced lung conditions often need respiratory therapy to learn better breathing skills to improve their function and live higher quality lives. This can sound daunting to someone who is suffering from a debilitating condition, because it requires a lot of hard work, but it has been shown to be effective in helping people with all sorts of conditions.<\/p>\n
Some conditions that people have are long term, such as COPD or asthma, which both disturb pulmonary function and can make it difficult to breathe, especially when doing strenuous work. Efforts to manage the condition can make a huge difference in long term function. Other conditions that might require respiratory therapy are short term, such as getting over a bout of pneumonia. This is something that might make breathing easily challenging, but that can be surmounted with focused therapy efforts, and people can get back to a normal life more quickly.<\/p>\n
There are two ways to get respiratory therapy. One is when a patient is already in an inpatient setting, perhaps recovering from illness. The inpatient facility has a respiratory therapist on staff to provide treatment. The other possibility is that the patient is managing at home, but sees that it won\u2019t work for too much longer without direct intervention.<\/p>\n