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Clinics & Locations
- Bad Aibling | Schön Klinik Bad Aibling
- Bad Aibling | Schön Klinik Harthausen
- Berchtesgaden - Schönau | Schön Klinik Berchtesgadener Land
- Hamburg | Schön Klinik Hamburg Eilbek
- Munich | Schön Klinik München Harlaching
- Munich | Schön Klinik München Schwabing
- Neustadt | Schön Klinik Neustadt
- Starnberg-Berg | Schön Klinik Starnberger See
- Vogtareuth | Schön Klinik Vogtareuth
Schön Klinik
Berchtesgadener Land
Pulmonary fibrosis. Our Treatment Concept
Rehabilitation for pulmonary fibrosis. Often an unexpected success.
Rehabilitation for pulmonary fibrosis: regaining your quality of life by increasing your physical strength.
Many doctors, cost-bearers, and also pulmonary fibrosis patients themselves, assume that rehabilitation makes little sense in this disease. Our experience with pulmonary fibrosis patients contradicts such an assumption, as do the latest scientific publications in medical literature. There are increasing numbers of studies which confirm our experience, namely that pulmonary fibrosis patients can certainly benefit from targeted rehabilitation programmes if the therapeutic concepts have been designed by experienced specialists.
Treatment for pulmonary fibrosis. Improve everyday mobility, not pulmonary function values.
Taking time to talk through the individual situation.
Physical strength, and hence the quality of life, is severely impaired in patients with pulmonary fibrosis. There is no medication available for curing the disease. Hence, every possibility to reduce your symptoms, as a pulmonary fibrosis patient, e.g. shortness of breath, weakness, anxiety and depression, must be exhausted. The aim is not to improve your pulmonary function values, but to enhance your everyday mobility as well as physical strength. For these factors bring you greater mobility and thus prevent your social isolation. When designing your rehabilitation programme, we look at the way in which the limitations of your pulmonary fibrosis impacts your professional and family life. Together with your input, we want to find a medium-term solution which not only enhances your physical capabilities, but also accounts for mental and social factors. We believe that what has proven to be a successful therapeutic standard in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), can be applied in equal measure to pulmonary fibrosis patients. In 2008, the British Lung Foundation incorporated rehabilitation into its guidelines as a standard treatment concept.
Medication for pulmonary fibrosis.
Despite intensive research efforts in recent decades, there has been no real breakthrough with medications for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis. Primarily, anti-inflammatory medications are used to suppress the body's own defences (immunosuppressants). During your rehabilitation stay, our experts will optimise your medication. The need for high-dose therapy with acetylcysteine (ACC) should be checked in the case of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, since this is one of the few medications with a proven effect in this disease and virtually non-existent side effects.
Physical therapy helps to relieve your respiratory load.
Practising respiratory and coughing techniques with experienced therapists.
The clearly increased respiratory work required of you, as a pulmonary fibrosis patient, is a strain on your body. Our respiratory therapists – who have worked for many years with patients suffering from serious lung diseases – use targeted physiotherapeutic methods to provide you with relief. The debilitating rigidity in the chest, which develops due to over-exertion, can be improved by specific movements and heat treatments. In individual therapy sessions you will be trained by our respiratory therapy specialists in breathing awareness, cough avoidance and the practice of respiratory and coughing techniques. Because pulmonary fibrosis patients have a very high respiratory rate due to their disease, our therapists teach you how to better coordinate your breathing and physical exertion.
Medical Training Therapy. Individual, and in gentle doses.
For pulmonary fibrosis: training within the limitations of the disease.
The central element to hospitalised rehabilitation for pulmonary fibrosis patients is medical sport and movement therapy supervised by experience sports scientists. What is believed to be impossible by many patients and referring physicians, i.e. physical exertion, becomes possible if you train within the limitations of your illness. Before you commence with training, we carry out careful medical examinations. By performing entry-level tests with sport therapy we can identify precisely the right degree of physical exertion you can manage. Patients with advanced-stage fibrosis are astonished to discover increasing benefits from their movement and training capabilities. Improved physical endurance and muscle strength lead to increased mobilisation and renewed vitality.
Long-term oxygen therapy. A great benefit.
Exchanging information with other patients in the oxygen group.
As pulmonary fibrosis advances, long-term oxygen therapy is often necessary. In spite of national and international therapeutic guidelines, fibrosis patients often lack both a proper diagnosis and treatment. By means of hospitalised rehabilitation, during which various measurements are taken in the daytime, at night and when exercising, we can establish the appropriate indication for long-term oxygen therapy and adjust the dosage to your own requirements. The patients at our clinic are trained by doctors, psychologists and social workers as part of a special oxygen therapy programme, and have the opportunity to exchange information with one another. Patients who have already been undergoing long-term oxygen therapy and are involved in self-help groups regularly give talks at our clinic and furnish first-hand information.
The 6-minute walking test – the measure of all things
There is no doubt that routine pulmonary function values taken by a lung specialist reveal the extent of a patient's pulmonary fibrosis. They do not show, however, the extent to which a fibrosis patient is capable on an everyday basis of any physical activity. Factors such as muscle strength, motivation and pain, e.g. caused by osteoporosis, cannot be determined. They can be established by the 6-minute walking test, a simple diagnostic tool which we use in all pulmonary fibrosis patients. The 6-minute walking test is of great importance, both to you and to the outcome of your rehab programme.
Lung transplantation. A way out?
Specific information and training for lung transplant candidates.
Lung transplantation is an established therapeutic procedure for advanced pulmonary fibrosis. During a hospitalised period of rehabilitation, we will take sufficient time to discuss this option with you. Many years of experience in dealing with lung transplant patients, both before and after surgery, have laid the appropriate foundation for such discussions. A special training concept is also in place. As part of the "LTx group", patients can benefit from a mutual exchange in addition to receiving factual information from doctors, psychologists, social workers, physiotherapists and nutritional experts. Thus the opportunity, as a potential lung transplant candidate, to learn from those having already undergone transplantation, is practically unparalleled. Schön Klinik Berchtesgadener Land is Europe's largest rehabilitation clinic for lung transplant patients and cares for patients in collaboration with almost every lung transplant centre in Germany and Austria.
Exploring new paths. Respiratory therapy for pulmonary fibrosis.
Individual fitting of a breathing mask: finding relief with respiratory therapy.
With increasing exhaustion of the respiratory musculature – also known as the respiratory pump – an increase in the carbon dioxide level in the blood results, along with the attendant negative effects, in addition to physical exhaustion and fatigue. Experience of treating such a phenomenon in other pulmonary diseases led to the notion of also applying respiratory therapy – also known as non-invasive ventilation (NIV) – in fibrosis patients, though previously this had hardly seemed feasible. Our own experience revealed, however, that in selected cases the respiratory situation in pulmonary fibrosis patients can be alleviated by respiratory therapy. Thus, many pulmonary patients can gain time – particularly with a view to potential transplantation.
Your contact person
Dr.
Bernd Sczepanski
Tel.: +49 8652 93-1542
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