Is telerehabilitation an effective maintenance strategy for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has proven to improve the physical and psychosocial function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, the gains achieved during pulmonary rehabilitation diminish over time without an effective maintenance strategy. With several factors affecting access to pulmonary rehabilitation, calls for innovative models were made, which saw the emergence of studies exploring telerehabilitation (TR) as an alternative to traditional pulmonary rehabilitation models. Although there are current reviews exploring the effectiveness of telerehabilitation as an alternative for conventional PR, no review has considered telerehabilitation effectiveness in the long term. Hence, this review aims at examining the effectiveness of telerehabilitation following to pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. MAIN BODY: A systematic review of the literature using CINAHL, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, Web of science PEDRO, AMED and EMBASE databases was conducted to assess the effectiveness of telerehabilitation following PR in patients with COPD. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and exercise capacity was maintained within 6–12 months of a TR maintenance programme. However, there was no significant increase in HRQoL and exercise capacity between the intervention and control groups in 6–12 months. CONCLUSIONS: This review suggests that a TR maintenance strategy effectively maintains benefits gained and may improve HRQoL and exercise capacity within 6–12 months for patients with COPD. Nonetheless, it is impossible to extrapolate the findings to the general population due to the paucity of included studies. Further high quality randomised controlled trials examining TR in the long-term is required in the future. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s42269-023-00980-8.