Adhikari Mira
Tribhuvan University, Nepal
Title: Knowledge and practice of dry powder inhalation among the patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in a regional hospital
Biography
Biography: Adhikari Mira
Abstract
Inhaled aerosoled drug is the mainstay of treatment in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) as it allows the delivery of drugs directly to the lungs with minimal side effects. Effectiveness of the treatment by those drugs depend on how correctly a patient inhales the drug through the prescribed inhaler. It has been reported that incorrect inhalation technique results in recurrent exacerbations of COPD increasing the health care costs and socio economic burden to the patient and the family. Despite this serious result, very little consideration is given to the inhalation technique used by the patient. Among the various devices, rotahaler is a commonly used aerosol device used to deliver drug in the form of dry powder for the treatment of COPD. Therefore, this study was undertaken to assess the accuracy of knowledge and practice of rotahaler among COPD patients.
The current study was descriptive study conducted in Western Regional Hospital, Pokhara. Study was conducted among 204 COPD patients (aged 20 or over) and who had been using DPI through rotahaler and purposive sampling technique was used. A questionnaire was administered by the interviewer to assess the knowledge while an observation checklist was adopted from Dutch Asthma Foundation to evaluate the practice of DPI. Findings from the study showed that a very less proportion (3.9%) of the respondents had correct practice of inhalation technique even though nearly half of them(49.5%) possessed average knowledge of DPI.
This study has concluded that rotahaler users possessed poor practice of DPI. The most important modifiable factor for incorrect practice was lack of demonstration on inhalation technique by health care provider. So, health care providers (doctors, nurses and pharmacists) should provide comprehensive verbal instruction followed by demonstration and return demonstration by the patient to improve the efficacy and effectiveness of the treatment in COPD patients.