Mindfulness and meditation: Complementary practices in the treatment of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Abstract

Introduction: In Brazil, an estimated 10 million people have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Depression and anxiety are present in over a third of COPD patients. Meditation and mindfulness are techniques indicated for stress reduction and promoting better quality of life, as well as in situations for softening the symptoms of COPD. Objective: To analyse the use of meditation and mindfulness as a complementary treatment for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Method: Descriptive trial. The synthesis was done in the form of a textual summary of the characteristics and relevant information of the scientific evidence on the use of meditation and mindfulness in the therapeutic approach for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases over 11 years, from 2005 to 2016. The electronic databases Pubmed, Scielo, Bireme, Xochrane, Medline and PEDro were used. The keywords were COPD, anxiety, depression, meditation and mindfulness. Results: Three review and ten intervention trial articles were found, comprising a total of 13. Conclusion: The use of mindfulness and meditation practices may be important therapeutic tools to treat the symptoms observed in COPD. They may be a valuable adjunct to pulmonary rehabilitation and tra-ditional drug therapy, since they help in the sensation of dyspnea, producing a decrease in anxiety, stress and depres-sion observed as co-morbidity of this disease. However, few experimental papers about meditation and mindfulness have been published. More studies about this type of intervention should be conducted.