Tele-Rehabilitation Interventions for Motor Symptoms in COVID-19 Patients: A Narrative Review

Serena Cerfoglio; Paolo Capodaglio; Paolo Rossi; Federica Verme; Gabriele Boldini; Viktoria Cvetkova; Graziano Ruggeri; Manuela Galli; Veronica Cimolin

doi:10.3390/bioengineering10060650

Tele-Rehabilitation Interventions for Motor Symptoms in COVID-19 Patients: A Narrative Review

Bioengineering (Basel). 2023 May 26;10(6):650. doi: 10.3390/bioengineering10060650.

Authors

Serena Cerfoglio^{1

2}, Paolo Capodaglio^{2

3}, Paolo Rossi⁴, Federica Verme², Gabriele Boldini², Viktoria Cvetkova⁴, Graziano Ruggeri⁴, Manuela Galli², Veronica Cimolin^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy.
² Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Unit and Research Laboratory in Biomechanics, Rehabilitation and Ergonomics, San Giuseppe Hospital, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, 28824 Piancavallo, Italy.
³ Department of Surgical Sciences, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Turin, 10126 Turin, Italy.
⁴ Clinica Hildebrand, Centro di Riabilitazione Brissago, CH-6614 Brissago, Switzerland.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges to global healthcare systems regarding the care of acute patients and the delivery of rehabilitation programs to post-acute or chronic patients. Patients who survive severe forms of COVID-19 often report incomplete healing and long-term symptoms. The need of these patients for rehabilitation has been recognized as a public health problem. In this context, the application of tele-rehabilitation has been explored to reduce the burden on healthcare systems. The purpose of this narrative review is to present an overview of the state of the art regarding the application of remote motor rehabilitation programs for paucisymptomatic acute and post-acute COVID-19 patients, with a focus on the motor aspects of tele-rehabilitation. Following an extensive search on PubMed, the Web of Science, and Scopus, specific studies have been reviewed and compared in terms of study objectives and participants, experimental protocols and methods for home-based interventions, functional assessment, and rehabilitation outcomes. Overall, this review suggests the feasibility and the effectiveness of tele-rehabilitation as a promising tool to complement face-to-face rehabilitation interventions. However, further improvements are needed to overcome the limitations and the current lack of knowledge in the field.

Keywords: COVID-19; functional capacity; long COVID; motor rehabilitation; rehabilitation; tele-rehabilitation.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This research was conducted in the field of TRIALS Project “La teleriabilitazione nel paziente post-covid: l’esperienza Italia-Svizzera”, a project co-funded by the European Union (FESR), Italy, the Swiss Confederation, and the Swiss Cantons – Interreg V-A Italy-Switzerland, and partially supported by the Italian Ministry of Health.