Respiratory
Introduction
Physiotherapy in the management of respiratory conditions is incredibly important. All of the other medical professions look towards us when it comes to the managment of patients who are struggling to breathe.
Respiratory physiotherapy is all about the management of the patient's airways to ensure that efficient ventilation and gaseous exchange can occur.
During the COVID pandemic, the role of physiotherapy in respiratory medicine has been highlighted to the public. Until now, very few people understood that physiotherapists are heavily involved in patients in Intensive Care Units (ICU) and people who are on ventilators.
The following page will explain the role of a respiratory physiotherapist and what they can do to help patients.
What is Respiratory Physiotherapy?
Respiratory physiotherapy generally occurs in an acute setting such as a hospital where patients are very poorly. A common misconception is that physiotherapists focus on specific respiratory conditions to treat such as cystic fibrosis - whilst you would be correct that we aid with their management, we see a lot more poorly patients with general chest infections day-to-day.
Respiratory physiotherapy can get very complicated, however, there are essentially 3 main roles of physiotherapy:
Increase lung volume
Clear mucus secretions
Decrease the work of breathing (how hard it is to breathe)
In any hospital, there will be a number of patients requiring respiratory interventions - most of these patients are give additional oxygen (provided by a mask of nasal cannulae) to keep the oxygen saturation of their blood within a normal level. As a physiotherapist, we use different treatments to try to increase the saturation of oxygen in the blood and reduce the need for additional oxygen.