**3.1. Personal information form**

262 Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – Current Concepts and Practice

When disease' symptoms affect the patient's performance of daily activities, the potential exists for overall quality of life to be decreased. If these symptoms continue to limit daily activities and the intensity of the symptom increases, patients to become deconditioned. This results in an interrelationship of symptoms affecting activities, and vice versa, often referred to as the "dyspnea spiral" or cycle of deconditioning. Pulmonary rehabilitation is one of the few interventions believed to break this cycle of progressive symptoms limiting activities (ATS,1999). Most patients are referred for pulmonary rehabilitation in order to improve the symptom of dyspnea. Nevertheless, patients with high fatigue derive significant benefit from pulmonary rehabilitation. Research of Baltzan et al. (2011) has shown that high levels of fatigue are common in patients entering pulmonary rehabilitation. Fatigued patients benefit from pulmonary rehabilitation, with improved exercise performance as well as improved health status. Lacasse et al. (2006) concluded that rehabilitation relieves dyspnea and fatigue, improves emotional function and enhances patients' sense of control over their condition. The primary measurable benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation to date have been a decrease in symptoms, and an increase in exercise endurance. A pulmonary rehabilitation program is to assess and treat activity limitations associated with symptoms of COPD including dyspnea in order to maximize patients' ability to participate in activities of daily living, leisure, and vocational pursuits (Migliore, 2004). Dyspnea and fatigue are important symptoms associated with COPD that

Fatigue and dyspnea are important symptoms requiring evaluation and management in patients with COPD. Nurses perform crucial responsibilities for supporting coping-skills against dyspnea and fatigue complaints of COPD patients. Investigating the correlation between dyspnea and fatigue will contribute to coping behaviors against dyspnea and fatigue and the quality of life of the patients. Because of the high prevalence of this symptom and the severity of suffering that can be associated with it, clinicians need to

The present research was conducted in order to investigate dyspnea, fatigue-experience and

The research was consisted of COPD patients who were ambulatory examined and checked at the pulmonary clinics of a state hospital between February and June 2009. The sample of the research was made up by 300 patients with COPD who accepted to participate. Participants were selected according to the following criteria; had been diagnosed of COPD, aged 18 years or older, understand, and communicate in Turkish, did not have any communicational and psychiatric problems. Written approvals from the hospital and oral consents from the patients were obtained. The data of the research were collected using face to face interview technique, personal information form, Medical Research Council Dyspnea

Data were entered into SPSS software (v. 14.0; SPSS Inc.,Chicago, IL) and recoded as required according to the questionnaires' scoring instructions. The data analysis was

improve with pulmonary rehabilitation (Meek &Lareau, 2003).

become familiar with available methods for the alleviation of dyspnea.

the correlation between dyspnea and fatigue.

Scale (MRC) and Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI).

**3. Material and methods** 

**2. Aim** 

Personal information form includes sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, educational level and disease characteristics such as disease length, disease severity, health condition, repeated hospitalization. COPD severity was defined by The GOLD criteria classify COPD into four stages (ATS, 1991; GOLD, 2006).
