Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article has an online supplement.Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is a highly effective, yet widely underused treatment for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as well as other chronic respiratory diseases.1,2 Typically, PR is an 8-12 week program delivered within a hospital or health care center. 2 However, patients may experience significant barriers to attending center-based PR (CBPR). 2 The opportunity to undertake PR at home via telerehabilitation may help overcome some patient-related barriers to attending CBPR, such as travel and transport issues, thereby supporting increased service access.[2][3][4] Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, very few programs ( just 4% in the Australian context) delivered home-based PR. 5 Telerehabilitation use expanded during the pandemic.However, postpandemic it is unclear how many services continue to deliver telerehabilitation, and how telerehabilitation delivery may have impacted CBPR programs, for people with COPD and other chronic respiratory diseases.Telerehabilitation programs may use synchronous (e.g., telephone calls, video conferencing) or asynchronous communication (e.g., email), 3 and can be available across a variety of platforms.A recent Cochrane review has demonstrated that, for people with COPD, telerehabilitation achieves similar clinical outcomes to CBPR for exercise capacity, quality of life, and breathlessness, although findings for other outcomes, such as hospitalization, remain limited by the certainty of available evidence.4 Telerehabilitation is, however, associated with greater program completion rates.4 International clinical practice guidelines recommend that people with chronic respiratory disease should be provided a choice of CBPR or telerehabilitation. 2 For telerehabilitation to be a clinically acceptable alternative to CBPR, program models should meet similar standards to those of CBPR in delivering the essential components of effective PR. 6 Defined essential components include an initial preprogram center-based assessment, individually prescribed and progressed endurance and resistance training, and delivery of the program by health care professionals trained in the specific telerehabilitation model. 1 The extent to which telerehabilitation models deliver the essential components of PR in clinical practice is unclear.
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Funder: National Science Council
OpenAlex ID: W4404749024