COPD flare-up — advice for adults
How to look after yourself at home after a flare-up of your COPD, and when to get help.
You have been treated for a flare-up of your COPD — a worsening of your usual breathing and cough. Here is how to manage at home, and when to get more help. Please read this and keep it handy.
Your care details
To be completed by the team before you leave.
These need an ambulance.
- Much more breathless than usual, or breathless at rest, and your inhalers are not helping
- Your lips or fingertips turn blue or grey
- New chest pain, or you are coughing up blood
- New confusion, or you are unusually drowsy
- You cannot speak in full sentences
Contact your GP, respiratory nurse, or the service named above the same day.
- You are more breathless than when you left hospital, but still coping
- You have finished your rescue pack and are no better
- Your phlegm turns green or brown, or there is much more of it
- You have a fever, or feel generally unwell
- Your ankles are more swollen than usual
Follow-up matters: arrange a review with your GP or respiratory team within 2 weeks of leaving hospital, and sooner if you are not improving. Rescue pack: if you have been given steroid tablets or antibiotics to keep at home, finish the course as prescribed and tell your GP you have used it, so it can be replaced and your plan reviewed. Inhalers: ask for your technique to be checked — it is one of the commonest reasons treatment does not work. Stopping smoking is the single most effective thing you can do; ask about local support. Ask about pulmonary rehabilitation and your flu and pneumococcal vaccinations.
Caring for yourself
- Take your inhalers as prescribed. Use a spacer to get the most from them.
- Finish the full course of any antibiotics and steroid tablets, even when you feel better.
- If you have a rescue pack and self-management plan, follow it.
- Keep gently active within your limits.
- If you smoke, stopping is the single best thing you can do — ask for support.
What to expect
Recovering from a flare-up takes time. For a while you may notice:
You should slowly get back to your normal level over a week or two.