Purpose of reviewBreathlessness can be debilitating for those with chronic conditions, requiring continual management. Yet, the meaning of breathlessness for those who live with it is poorly understood in respect of its subjective, cultural, and experiential significance. This article discusses a number of current issues in understanding the experience of breathlessness.Recent findingsEffective communication concerning the experience of breathlessness is crucial for diagnosis, to identify appropriate treatment, and to provide patients with the capacity to self-manage their condition. However, there is an evident disconnect between the way breathlessness is understood between clinical and lay perspectives, in terms of awareness of breathlessness, the way symptoms are expressed, and acknowledgement of how it affects the daily lives of patients.SummaryThe review highlights the need for integrated multidisciplinary work on breathlessness, and suggests that effective understanding and management of breathlessness considers its wider subjective and social significance.

Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is recommended for all individuals living with a lung condition and chronic breathlessness. This article considers how adopting an interdisciplinary, medical humanities approach to the term ‘pulmonary rehabilitation’ might unpack some of the misconceptions, misrepresentations or negative connotations surrounding it, which have been largely overlooked in explanations of the low uptake of this programme. Taking key insights from Wellcome Trust-funded Life of Breath project, including ethnographic research in community fitness groups in North East England and the ‘Breath Lab’ special interest group, this article outlines how the whole-body approach of PR is not easily understood by those with lung conditions; how experience can inform breath perception through the pacing of everyday life; and how stigma can impact rehabilitation. This article highlights the value of medical humanities in working through communicative challenges evident in the translation of PR between patient and clinical contexts and sets out two arts-based approaches (Singing for Lung Health and dance movement) as potential options that could be included in the PR referral. Finally, the article outlines the need for collaborative research exploring the communication and meaning of healthcare strategies and experiences at the interface of the arts, humanities and medical practice.

Breath, the ephemeral materialization of air at the interface of body and world, engages with and alters the quality of both. As a process of inhalation and exhalation that signals its physiological universality, breath is an invisible prerequisite for life, an automated and functional necessity. Yet it is more than simply a reflexive action and can at times be controlled or manipulated. It can also affect or be affected by experiences, environments and relationships. In this essay, like the contributors to the special issue it prefaces, we aim to address the lacuna that exists in the examination of the meanings and embodiment of breath as a central theme in the humanitics and social sciences. Interdisciplinary perspectives that explore breath as a multifaceted phenomenon, both intrinsically shared and contextually distinct, open new directions in the field of breath and body studies.

We wholly applaud the move by Johnson et al. [1] to improve awareness of breathlessness and to raise its profile as a subject for focussed clinical research. We consider their research and the ensuing proposal to recognise breathlessness via a new medical term, “chronic breathlessness syndrome”, as important and justified. We share their goal, which is to direct attention to this neglected, undertreated and under-researched symptom.

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