All About Telehealth for COPD Telehealth allows doctors to care for people over a phone call, text message, or most commonly, video chat. Although some situations require an in-person visit, telehealth is a great option when you can't get to the doctor's office for your COPD. If you're new to telehealth, here's what you need to know. Medicare will cover a telehealth visit just like an in-person visit, but state Medicaid programs and private insurers vary, so confirm your coverage in advance. With telehealth, your private health information is still protected by HIPAA, so it will remain confidential and secure. Although your pulmonologist can't give you a physical exam via telehealth, they can write you prescriptions and offer quality care, especially if you prepare in advance. Here are some things your doctor may ask you to do before your telehealth appointment:- List any COPD symptoms, including dates and severity- Note any problems with your COPD medications or inhalers- Compile a list of your health conditions and medications- Record your vitals if you own a blood pressure monitor, respiratory monitor, or thermometer Before your telehealth appointment:- Charge your computer, phone, or tablet- Make sure your internet is reliable- List any questions you have for your doctor- Find a quiet, private space for the call- Be prepared with pen and paper- Download telehealth apps if needed Turn to Healthgrades to connect with the right pulmonologist to treat COPD via telehealth. And share this video to spread the word!

Kathy: When I was first diagnosed with COPD, I was petrified. All the things I used to be able to do, I can't do anymore. But I have limitations and I learned to work within those limitations. Dr. Parikh: Hi, I'm Dr. Parikh, let's talk about diet and lifestyle changes, such as breathing techniques that can help with COPD. Robert: I went through a week of pulmonary rehab. They taught me how to walk, they taught me how to take the stairs, exercises to make sure that I use my lungs to full capacity. Robert: First and foremost is breathing. You breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth, and you're supposed to breathe out twice as long as you breathe in. Edward: Do you do this on a daily basis every day now? Robert: I do this anytime I get short of breath. Kathy: There are so many people that have COPD or asthma, or both, unfortunately, in my case. I noticed the days that I don't have enough protein, that my asthma bothers me. Dr. Shahzad: In general, we see the carbohydrate is going to produce more carbon dioxide, so I do tell my patients have more protein, like fish, eggs. Edward: To avoid some of the carbohydrates, I discovered zucchini noodles, that helps a lot, because you're cutting out a lot of carbs. Dr. Shahzad: Have small, frequent meals. Kathy: I agree 100% with you on this, because if you feel as though you're stuffing yourself, afterwards you're sitting there gasping for air. The weight issue plays a big difference. Kathy: When a doctor said to me, you need to exercise, it was like whoop, taboo word. I don't want to hear it. Then I realized it doesn't mean that I have to go to a gym, when it's summer time and I can't breathe, I'll go into the store and take a carriage, and walk the perimeter of the store, because it's air conditioned. Robert: The shopping malls also are very good in the winter, when you're afraid to walk on the sidewalks because they're all icy. Dr. Shahzad: Another thing which will help you--you should take your medications regularly. Robert: Fortunately, I have a partner who takes care of setting up all my meds. Dr. Parikh: Very important. Robert: I have all my medications on my iPhone, and that's perfect, because you go, this is what I'm taking. Kathy: When I was first diagnosed with COPD, I thought, "Oh no, now what? My life's done, this is it." But it was a lifestyle change. I realized, I can't do what I used to do. But there are some things I still can do. Edward: I also faced the fact, the realization, that as I get older, this is not going to get any better, but you can control it. Dr. Parikh: And you have experts available to help you with these decisions. When you incorporate diet, lifestyle changes, medication management, it's really important to engage your family members, your doctors, to make sure you're doing things that's best for you.

Kathy: To have COPD feels like you have a plastic bag on your head, and the more you struggle to get a breath in, the harder it is to breathe. Dr. Parikh: Hi, I'm Dr. Parikh. Today we're talking about COPD. It is a chronic lung condition that makes it hard to breathe. Kathy: I have severe COPD/adult respiratory distress syndrome, which means I'm at a high risk to stop breathing at any time. Robert: I get short of breath if I walk long distances. I get short of breath if I talk a lot. Edward: Right now, if I go up a flight of stairs, I'm out of breath at the end, but the realization is there's no cure for this, that I'm going to have to do maintenance. Kathy: Heat is a trigger. Perfume's a trigger for me. When most people get a cold, I get bronchitis instantly. But once I was able to identify the triggers and contain them, I was much better. Dr. Parikh: So what are the most common treatments for COPD? Dr. Shahzad: So the flare-up treatment is a short-acting beta agonist, which you take two puffs as needed which should be four to six times a day. Either it's going to be an inhaler or in the nebulizer form. Dr. Shahzad: The second is, once your disease is progressing, you will now use some maintenance medications which are also bronchodilators to open up your lungs, and we start with medications called LAMA, which is long-acting muscarinic agents. You cannot stop your maintenance medications without consulting your doctor. Edward: I do my spray the first thing in the morning. Is that wrong? Dr. Shahzad: It depends which inhalers you take. It's very important to take it at a specific time of day. The other thing is oxygen. Once you qualify for oxygen, you have to use it at least 15 to 18 hours a day. Dr. Parikh: What type of treatment were you started on when you were first diagnosed? Robert: When I was first diagnosed, it was just a rescue inhaler and occasionally a nebulizer treatment. Robert: And do you tend to change your medications depending on how severe your symptoms are? Kathy: It was a lot of trial and error until we found something that actually worked. Dr. Parikh: And do you carry some medications with you? Robert: The only medication I carry with me is my rescue inhaler. Kathy: Once you realize you're not alone with this condition and you have to realize how to cope with it, how to get through your day, and don't judge somebody by the way that they look just because you don't look like you have COPD, what is somebody with COPD supposed to look like?

Pulmonary rehab is a multidisciplinary approach to helping people with chronic lung disease optimize their functional capacity and their ability to do things. Many times, people with chronic lung disease get short of breath doing things, and it starts to limit their activity or their ability to do things. What we try to do is get to those patients quite early in the disease process, or if it's later, and help them improve their capacity to function. What are the best breathing exercises for a patient to do who has chronic obstructive lung disease, COPD? One in particular is pursed lip breathing. We teach them, when you start to get short of breath, breathe in through your nose and out through pursed lips, like you're blowing out a candle. You want to extend that exhalation two or three times at least longer than you breathe in. The reason you do that is the air is trapped in your lungs, and we need to let you get rid of the bad trapped gas. When you purse your lips like this, you create a little back pressure in your lungs and it holds open the smaller airways to allow you to empty the bad trapped gas a little bit better. What we try to do is teach them to use their diaphragm more. It's retraining your diaphragm to breathe again. Now this one's a little more difficult for COPD patients. We typically will have them rest a hand on your chest and one on your abdomen, and we'll have you lean back a little bit because this actually works better if you're reclined. What you do is have them relax and breathe in. A lot of patients with COPD will breathe in where their chest comes out and their stomach goes in, kind of the opposite, because over years, their diaphragm tends to flatten out a little bit. That flattening is less efficient. Patients with chronic lung disease, some will have difficulty with secretions or coughing up things. They have a very productive cough. What we do also teach them are certain things that may help them to clear their lungs, certain coughing techniques. We have devices that help that, different things that you blow through to create a little back pressure to help clear those secretions. One thing you do is we will have them take a breath in, hold their breath, let it out easy. Have a series of breaths like that to loosen up the mucus. Then we will have them do something called a huff cough, where they breathe in through their mouth or their nose, hold their mouth open and ... This is called a huff cough. You breathe in again, open up your mouth ... Then you take a deep breath in and three short coughs to try to clear your airway. One of the great things about when they get into the program, they start at a certain level and advance to another level. Subsequently, when they come back for physician visits, we will always see them and say, "Okay. What are you doing?" We're trying to invest ourselves in helping them for the long term.

COPD is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is something that encompasses several diagnoses. The most common cause, of course, is cigarette smoke, but there's other occupational and environmental causes, as well. The number one thing that people can do, obviously, is to quit smoking, and actually, quitting smoking will change the progression and slow down the disease. Symptoms generally are progressive dyspnea, shortness of breath, usually, at first, just with exertion. They can also have cough and chronic sputum production, so phlegm. A myth of COPD is that it is only in old people, but many, many patients will present in their late 40s or early 50s, as well. When patients have an exacerbation, many times there's a big level of anxiety that comes along with that. It's natural. If you can't breathe, you're going to be anxious. Having a good plan in terms of medications, when to call 911, or when to just go to the hospital will help your patient. Oxygen therapy in a COPD patient, when it is appropriate and needed, is extremely important. After smoking cessation, it's the only other treatment that we have that actually extends patients' lives. So, bottom line, if you're diagnosed with COPD, you need to have a good relationship with your physician, have the appropriate diagnostic tests so that you understand how severe the problem is, and then you need to understand how medications can help, how oxygen, when appropriate, can help, and how pulmonary rehabilitation can help, as well.

How do people practically manage their life with COPD? It all comes down to certain things: planning, you want to kind of plan ahead when you're going to do something, whatever it is around the house, whether it's meals, whether it's laundry, whether it's grocery shopping. You have to plan ahead for when you can do that. Certain times of the day, you may have more energy, times when it may be less crowded. Prioritizing--you want to figure out what's most important. Is it that important to have all my laundry ironed perfectly? You don't have to iron everything; you buy certain clothes. You want to figure out what's the most important. Certain things are more difficult. Dusting: some people like to dust and it's hard to reach things, so you want to use an extended-handle duster--that type of device that attaches--to dust, because sometimes even the dust can cause people to have breathing difficulties. So the type of products that you get for doing the basic things for taking care of your household, you have to be careful with that. Practical matters in the kitchen is one thing that you want to look at. Patients tend to do things based on what they've always done in the past. And so when you start to get more short of breath doing things, you keep everything the same, but maybe your cereal that you eat every day is set up at a lower shelf and so you get short of breath reaching it. Or at the other end of the kitchen, away from the milk and where the bowls are. So sometimes what you have to do is reorganize your kitchen so you can reach things easier, so you don't get as short of breath doing those things. Sometimes it's even a matter of, when you're fixing your meal, setting everything on a waist-high shelf that you can reach and get easily. Some people even put their things on carts so that they can wheel them around a little bit, if it's plates, if it's whatever, so that it makes it easier, instead of moving back and forth all the time to get things. So simple things that help somebody around their bedroom even are just when you get up in the morning, instead of walking around your bed and making it, you make the other half while you're laying in it. And then you just work your way up and make your side so your bed's made, just that simply. People use straps. People use different things to pull. They arrange their room in a way that's easy to get things when they get up in the morning. We have some patients who get very short of breath when they get up in the morning. It's a big thing because when you go from lying down to sitting up, you're working, you're breathing hard, and some people reach right away for their nebulizer. So they'll keep everything they need relatively close. So even the phone, a cell phone, different things like that, the remote control, so they can not reach all over, grabbing. So different things like that are what we use to try to help them with their shortness of breath.

5 Things You Didn’t Know About COPD 1. COPD is the third leading cause of death in the United States.More than 15 million Americans have been diagnosed with COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Only heart disease and cancer cause more deaths in America. 2. Women are more vulnerable to COPD than men.Because more women have taken up smoking since the 1960s, the number of deaths among women with COPD has skyrocketed in recent years. 3. Smoking is not the only cause of COPD.Experts agree tobacco smoke is the main cause of COPD. But there are other contributing factors, like genetics, pollution and respiratory infections. 4. COPD is often misdiagnosed.People often mistake the early signs of COPD, like chronic cough or shortness of breath, as part of the normal aging process. 5. The right doctor can mean a world of difference.Finding the best doctor to help you with COPD can increase your quality of life. Turn to Healthgrades.com to search for the right doctor for you. Share this video to help educate others about COPD!

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a serious lung disease that disrupts normal breathing and affects more than 24 million Americans, but many people don't know much about it. In fact, almost half of people with COPD haven't been diagnosed. Can you separate myth from fact? Myth 1: COPD is one single disease affecting the airways. In fact, COPD is an umbrella term that covers several progressive lung diseases, including emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and others. Myth 2: Smoking is the one thing that leads to COPD. While smoking is the primary cause of COPD, it's not the only one. Most cases of COPD are caused by inhaling pollutants like tobacco smoke, plus fumes, chemicals, and dust found in some work environments. Genetic factors play a role, too, meaning COPD can sometimes develop in people who have never smoked or been exposed to lung irritants. Myth 3: As we get older, it gets harder to breath. That's not the case. Breathing problems can occur at any age and accompany many health conditions, but they are a primary symptom of COPD. Other symptoms include frequent cough, chest tightness, fatigue, and excess mucus. If you experience symptoms of COPD, talk to your doctor about getting tested. Myth 4: You don't need a specialist to treat COPD. Lung specialists, called pulmonologists, have the training, skills, and experience to find the best treatment plan for your COPD. By using Healthgrades' Guided Physician Search, it's easy to find a pulmonologist who's the best fit for you. Myth 5: People with COPD aren't fit to exercise and should avoid exerting themselves. It may seem counterintuitive, but actually, exercising could help people with COPD in many ways. It could improve circulation so the body uses oxygen more efficiently, and build up your energy levels so you can do more without getting tired. Ask your doctor about finding the right exercise plan for you. Myth 6: Since there's no cure for COPD, treatment doesn't work either. That's not true. Treatment options like smoking cessation, medications, and oxygen therapy all do their part to improve your lung health, preserve lung function, and help you feel better. If you're not currently treating your COPD, it's not too late to start. Remember, it's easy to find the right doctor at Healthgrades.