{"id":9403,"date":"2026-08-24T13:49:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/?p=9403"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:04:17","slug":"physiotherapy-for-heart-and-lungs-cardiopulmonary-physiotherapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/?p=9403","title":{"rendered":"PHYSIOTHERAPY FOR HEART AND LUNGS: Cardiopulmonary Physiotherapy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Binisha Shakya
<\/strong>She is a Cardiopulmonary Physiotherapist based in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has a strong interest in respiratory care and exercise based pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation. Clinically she is involved in advancing respiratory services in critical care and long term functional recovery in patients undergoing major heart and lung surgeries at Nepal Mediciti, Lalitpur. She is committed to make an individual active and strong through individualized exercise program and improve their quality of life regardless of their age. She is passionate about evidence based patient care, health promotion and advancing cardiopulmonary rehabilitation services in Nepal. Her goal also focuses on creating awareness in need of exercise for both preventive and rehabilitative health care. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Physiotherapy is a health profession that helps people restore, maintain and improve movement and bodily function after any injury, illness, surgery or any long term conditions. Physiotherapists have an equal role in identifying the risk factors of various diseases in time and has a major role in prevention of injuries. While many of us have just started to hear of physiotherapy, the areas of practice of physiotherapy is actually broad and includes orthopedics, neurology, cardiorespiratory, pediatrics, women’s health, geriatric, sports, ergonomics and community based rehabilitation. All these areas have their respective specialization practice.
According to the latest global estimates from WHO, Non Communicable Disease (NCDs) accounts for 75% of all deaths worldwide and 80% of premature NCD deaths occur in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Following is the distribution of Global estimated prevalence of major NCD’s:
Hypertension: 1.3 billion adult
Diabetes: 830 million
COPD: 390 million
Asthma: 260 million
Cancer: Tens of millions of people living with cancer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the NCDs, Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRDs) accounts for 44% and 10% of all deaths respectively. CVDs and Diabetes are increasing rapidly due to unhealthy diet, urbanization, western lifestyle, decrease in physical activity, aging and obesity while CRDs including COPD are mostly prevalent due to outdoor air pollution, the worldwide global warming, excessive use of tobacco, smoking and firewood cooking.
People with severe pulmonary conditions have major problems as secretion retention, breathlessness, weak inspiratory muscles and use of accessory muscles in chronic cases. These problems arise as a result of impaired ventilation, disturbance in gas exchange and difficulty in airway clearance due to the disease condition. The resulting decrease in physical activity due to above problems gradually leads to less movement, confinement of the individual in bed, increase in dependency for Activities of Daily Living , increase in hospital admissions and ultimately decrease in the quality of life. Thus, the growing burden of NCDs has increased the need for cardiorespiratory physiotherapy.
Cardiopulmonary physiotherapy, focuses on improving the health of heart and lungs. The core practice is in the critical care units but it has equal importance in prevention of the heart and lung diseases and recovery following the diseases. It helps people to breathe more easily way, removes secretion, improve ventilation for those who have pulmonary conditions as COPD, asthma, pneumonia. Likewise, it improves the exercise tolerance in deconditioned individuals due to chronic diseases, improves functional capacity and helps increase their quality of life.
This practice also prepares an individual for the major surgeries increasing their level of fitness and in recovery after the major heart and lung surgeries to get back to the normal activities and activities of daily living. The rehabilitation program focused on pulmonary conditions is termed ‘Pulmonary Rehabilitation.’
Cardiopulmonary physiotherapists play a major role to help people stay independent, breathe more comfortably and learn various techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PULMONARY REHABILITATION (PR)
PR is a comprehensive program that includes education on the disease condition, exercise training, coping techniques especially designed for people with chronic lung diseases. PR is dedicated for people with lung conditions as COPD (chronic bronchitis and emphysema), bronchiectasis, pulmonary fibrosis, asthma, lung cancer, post COVID-19, interstitial lung diseases.
The damaged airways and air sacs in COPD results in breathlessness, weakens respiratory muscles leading to labored breathing and increasing the use of accessory muscles. This decreases the activity level and reduces exercise capacity. This leads to muscles weakness and deconditioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benefits of PR:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Improves airway clearance<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Improves gas exchange<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Reduces breathlessness<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Improves respiratory muscle strength<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Increases exercise capacity<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Prevents pulmonary conditions<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Facilitates recovery after major surgery<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Improves quality of life<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. Reduces hospital admissions<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Components of PR:
    Education:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • Proper information on disease condition<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Use of medication: Correct inhaler technique<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Self management skills.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      Breathing strategies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      • Learning correct breathing techniques<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Dyspnea relieving techniques : Positioning<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Reduce use of accessory muscle<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Airway clearance techniques<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      • Assisted coughing techniques<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Exercise training: to improve the endurance and strength of extremities including the respiratory muscles. It improves maximal oxygen uptake and increases exercise capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \n
        • Aerobic exercise training: Walking, Cycling, Interval training<\/li>\n\n\n\n
        • Resistance exercise training<\/li>\n\n\n\n
        • Inspiratory muscle training (IMT)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

          Energy conservation techniques:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \n
          • Pacing techniques to assist to perform Activity of Daily Living (ADL) in easier way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

            Smoking cessation: Ongoing smoking accelerates the disease progression so smoking cessation helps the patients to quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Nutritional counselling to achieve healthy weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Psychological support, counselling and group sessions reduces anxiety and depression resulting due to the condition and thus improves self esteem.
            This program is usually conducted 2-3 sessions per week for 6-8 weeks as outpatient programs at hospitals, clinics or a dedicated pulmonary rehabilitation centers by physiotherapists.
            Pulmonary rehabilitation reduces the risk of death within a year from nearly 20% to 7% when started within 90 days of COPD related hospital discharge. Additionally, it reduces exacerbations and hospital admissions by 20-50% decreasing the incidence of flare ups.
            Thus, pulmonary rehabilitation is a comprehensive program of exercise training, education , breathing techniques and self management support that improves functional capacity and quality of life in people with chronic respiratory diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            Binisha ShakyaShe is a Cardiopulmonary Physiotherapist based in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has a strong interest in respiratory care and exercise based pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation. Clinically she is involved in advancing respiratory services in critical care and long term functional recovery in patients undergoing major heart and lung surgeries at Nepal Mediciti, Lalitpur. She is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":9405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[39,105,326],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-feature","category-global-health","category-health-nutrition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/medicosnext.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/osteopathist-treating-girl-hospital-scaled.jpg?fit=1707%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9406,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9403\/revisions\/9406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medicosnext.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}