Results
Study patients
Fig. 1 displays the patients’ flow throughout the study.
Between 2002 and 2003, we assessed 101 patients for
eligibility and randomly assigned 45 patients. Fifty-six
patients did not meet all inclusion criteria and 16 refused to
participate without financial compensation. One patient
from the intervention group did not fulfill our adherence
criteria to the 4-week program, and also did not complete
the 1-year evaluation. Six more patients were not available
for follow-up evaluation: four in the usual care group, and two in the intervention group. The withdrawals were due to
miscellaneous medical conditions (n Z 3), and COPD
exacerbation (n Z 3). Due to the missing data, we did not
retain these patients in our 1-year analyses.