Rehabilitation at the time of pandemic: Patient Journey Recommendations

Objective(s): The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic started in March 2020, caused over 6 million coronavirus disease (COVID-19) related deaths worldwide (1, 2). Access to and delivery of rehabilitation care were severely disrupted, and patients have faced several challenges during the COVID-19 outbreak (3). These challenges include addressing new functional impairments faced by survivors of COVID-19 and infection prevention to avoid the virus spreading to healthcare workers and other patients not infected with COVID-19 (4-7). In this scoping review, we aimed to develop rehabilitation recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic across the continuum of rehabilitation care.

Data Sources: Established frameworks were used to guide the scoping review methodology. Medline, Embase, PubMed, CINAHL databases from inception to August 1, 2020, and prominent rehabilitation organizations' websites were searched.

Study Selection: We included articles and reports if they were focused on rehabilitation recommendations for COVID-19 survivors or the general population at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data Extraction: Two team members used a pre-tested data extraction form to extract data from included full-text articles. The strength and the quality of the extracted recommendations were evaluated by two reviewers using the GRADE approach.

Data Synthesis: We retrieved 6,468 citations, of which 2,086 were eligible after removing duplicates. We excluded 1,980 citations based on the title and the abstract. Of the full-text articles screened, we included 106 studies. We presented recommendations based on the patient journey at the time of the pandemic. We assessed the evidence to be of overall fair quality and strong for the recommendations.

Conclusions: We have combined the latest research results and accumulated expert opinions on rehabilitation to develop acute and post-acute rehabilitation recommendations in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Further and ongoing updates are warranted in order to incorporate the emerging evidence into rehabilitation guidelines.

Author(s) Disclosures: This symposium is sponsored by the COVID-19 and Frailty Task Force from the Aging Research and Geriatric Rehabilitation Networking Groups.