Impact of halotherapy on COPD exacerbations

Abstract

Halotherapy is a well-known alternative treatment method used in rehabilitation of respiratory chronic diseases and prevention of pulmonary infectious diseases, having both empiric and scientific data for its success. Romania has the geographical opportunity of many areas enriched by salt springs and natural salt caves that provided the background for more elaborate studies regarding the benefits of halotherapy for patients with chronic respiratory diseases.

As shown in recent studies, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease benefit most from sessions of halotherapy and with the help of recent technological progress, the cure can be obtained using small inhalers with pure salt.

We propose a retrospective study to assess the impact of daily home halotherapy sessions on reducing exacerbations on patients with stage II and III COPD using our clinic data.

A pool of 215 patients was selected from our clinic database (between 2016-2018) with stage II or III COPD. Using patients’ history and hospital presentations we assessed the number of hospital admissions due to COPD exacerbations and manually checked whether patients had a recommendation of halotherapy. Our study found that 28 patients had a halotherapy recommendation (13%). 65,6% of patients (142) had at least 2 exacerbation within the 3 years period and only 9 of them had a recommendation for halotherapy. 19 patients had no COPD exacerbations in the given period.

Halotherapy seems to have a positive impact on reducing the exacerbation risk of patients with chronic pulmonary diseases but has still a low rate of recommendation from the respiratory professionals due to their possible lack of trust in a method that doesn’t produce immediate effects.