The Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Handbook by François Haas and Sheila Sperber Haas

This invaluable work offers new hope to the 20 million sufferers from chronic respiratory disorders, teaching them how to self-manage the disease and lead happy, healthy lives. In an easy-to-follow style, readers are shown how to tailor a rehabilitation program to their life-style. Highlights include: comprehensive and practical guidance featuring the latest techniques developed at one of the nation's top clinics; rehabilitation programs that slow the progress of the disease at any age and dramatically improve the quality of life; selecting the right medication; finding the right doctor; managing stress and anxiety; physical therapy; job retraining; an appendix of community and public resources and a guide to other information sources. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
In July, 2000, my MD pointed to my chest XRay and said: "There's your Emphysema." So I needed to learn more about this total surprise: I went to Amazon, and the 1990 Edition of this book was available, and I bought it, and placed a pre-order for this Updated Edition. The 1990 Edition is superb: it gave me a quick Cook's Tour into my own terra incognita. This Revised Edition builds on the 1990's firm foundation, and adds the break-thru's of the last five years: LVRS [Lung Volume Reduction Surgery] and herbal therapy as two specific examples. And the changes in health insurance practices means that COPD [chronic bronchitis and emphysema] patients must now fend for themselves in obtaining quality and quantity treatment. And this book gives the tools to do just that. "COPD can be an exhausting and overwhelming burden to live with. Patients [and their caregivers] who continually fear running out of air, who watch their capacities dwindle prematurely, struggle with a heightened sense of their fragility. They and those close to them are usually frightened, depressed and angry. Doctors treating COPD patients do the best they know how to do. The problem is that so many were taught only to treat the medical aspects of COPD--and many [doctors] have never learned since to appreciate the importance of rehabilitating their patients. . . . Restoration to a happier, healthier lifestyle should be the goal of any tratment program -- and it is certainly [the aim of this book] in educating you." This revised edition is the best there is for the trained, scholarly, and lay patient audiences: it is the terra firma when one is innundated with the contrary and steroid fueled anecdotal opinions one encounters in certain EST-like effort-less support groups on the Internet. This "Chronic Bronchitis and Emphysema Handbook helps COPD patients and their families achieve the kind of realistic perspective about their disease that allows them to live confidently and reasonably calmly with it, and so remove needless limitations from their lives. . ." With this book, I learned to breathe easily and breathe well.AMDG