Effects of respiratory rehabilitation on patients with novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia in the rehabilitation phase: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION: The recent viral pneumonia caused by the COVID-19 has gained the attention of the people all over the world. We aim to investigate the effects of respiratory rehabilitation therapy on patients infected with the novel coronavirus by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This systematic review and meta-analysis have been registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO). The PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data and Viper information databases will be searched from inception time to date without restricting research types to find relevant studies. We will also look into reference lists of relevant trials and reviews, and manually search grey literature, such as trial registries. Two reviewers will independently extract data and perform quality assessment of included studies. Review Manager V.5.3 (Cochrane Collaboration) and Stata V.16.0 software will be used to conduct this meta-analysis. The mean difference or standardised mean difference with 95% CIs is used in the computation of continuous variables to synthesise data. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval is not required due to the nature of this meta-analysis, which is based on published papers. The results of this systematic review and meta-analysis will be published in a peer-reviewed journal once we finish this study. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020180214.