Telerehabilitation Intervention in Transitional Care for People with COVID-19: Pre-Post Study with a Non-Equivalent Control Group

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 infection and its resulting sequelae have increased the prevalence of people with respiratory symptoms, with impacts on functional capacity, quality of life, anxiety, depression, and mental health. To mitigate this problem, one challenge has been the design and implementation of interventions that simultaneously allow for education, rehabilitation, and monitoring of people with long COVID, at a time when health services were on the verge of rupture due to the volume of people with active COVID and in need of intensive care. Telerehabilitation emerged as a mode for providing rehabilitative care that brought professionals closer to patients and enabled continuity of care. The present study aimed to evaluate the results of a telerehabilitation intervention for people with injuries associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in hospital-community transitions, considering their degree of dependence in performing activities of daily living, respiratory symptoms, fatigue, gait capacity, muscle strength, and experience with anxiety and depression. A pre-post study with a non-equivalent control group was carried out with a total of 49 participants (intervention group n = 24; control group n = 25). The post-intervention results showed an increase in saturation, a decrease in heart rate, an improvement in the impact of post-COVID functionality, a decrease in fatigue, a decrease in perceived effort, and a decrease in depressive and anxiety symptoms. The telerehabilitation intervention, which combined educational strategies with respiratory and motor rehabilitation, helped improve global functionality and self-care, with clinical and functional impacts.

Telerehabilitation in Children and Adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis: A Scoping Review

“…Although the research strategy was comprehensive in answering the research question, the low number of studies identified stands out for showing that telerehabilitation is still in development and being adopted by reference centres for monitoring the disease, still without dissemination of the results of its implementation. Even so, the results corroborate the opinions of other authors, who suggest that supervised telerehabilitation with telemon-itoring support is feasible and safe, without adverse events, and adherence is high, with a recruitment rate consistent with previous respiratory rehabilitation trials [30,31].…”

“…These virtual interventions eliminate the need for unnecessary in-person referrals to specialists, reduce wait times for specialist feedback, and eliminate the need for unnecessary travel [32]. They also simultaneously allow the timely identification of clinical changes, worsening of symptoms, and non-adherence to the therapeutic regimen [30][31][32].…”

The Delphi Method: Developing a Telerehabilitation Practice Guideline for Patients in Indonesia with Long COVID

“… Reis et al (2023) , explored the pre-post effects of telerehabilitation (i.e., a home-based rehabilitation program supervised by video calls) in patients with Long COVID in control and intervention groups. The intervention group received an intensive rehabilitation program three times a week for 12 weeks followed by a maintenance rehabilitation phase once a week for 2 weeks.…”