A Comparison of Classic and Virtual Inhaler Training Methods in COPD Patients

According to the World Health Organization data, the third most common cause of death in the world, is COPD , a disease that progresses with exacerbations (1). Exacerbations are the most important cause of morbidity and mortality in COPD (2). It is thought that most exacerbations occur (3,4) because highly effective inhaler treatments are unavailable to prevent and treat respiratory symptoms (5,6). However, using inhaler devices correctly can be difficult (jama7,8). Guidelines recommend evaluating and teaching inhaler use technique (5,6). Unfortunately, these are often not implemented, especially in a hospital setting (9,10). Worldwide, 25 billion dollars are spent annually on inhaler drugs, 5-7 billion dollars of which is estimated to be wasted because of incorrect technique. Beyond this financial cost, incorrect inhaler technique is associated with worse symptom control, lower quality of life and increased acute care costs, (11,12,13). Although these shortcomings are known, appropriate educational interventions are unfortunately not been available. Additionally , patient\'s access to health services (especially face-to-face communication with recommended health providers) has been largely prevented due to the restrictions/requirements implemented against the pandemic in 2020,such as social isolation, staying away from public environments, and ensuring good personal and social hygiene. Considering that inhaler training is done face-to-face by doctors or allied health personnel today, many patients did not receive inhaler drug use training. One of the most realistic solutions that we encountered with this pandemic is telemedicine. The use of internet-mediated training, which is a part of telemedicine, has come to the foreground. In a recently published study on chronic airway diseases (asthma and COPD), it was revealed that video-mediated inhaler training is as successful as classical face-to-face training (14).Our aim is to investigate whether video-mediated virtual inhaler training is successful in patients with COPD.