Rehabilitation and COVID-19: the Cochrane Rehabilitation 2020 rapid living systematic review. Update as of July 31st, 2020

Abstract

Introduction: This paper is the first update of the second edition of the rapid living systematic review on the latest scientific literature informing rehabilitation of patients with COVID-19 and/or describing consequences of the disease and its treatment, as they relate to limitations in functioning of rehabilitation interest. The aim of this study was to report data of a systematic search performed on papers published in July 2020.

Evidence acquisition: The methodology described in the second edition of the rapid living systematic review was applied to search eligible papers included in the databases between July 1, 2020 and July 31, 2020.

Evidence synthesis: Eight-hundred-ninety-two papers were identified through database searching (after removal of duplicates); of these, only 23 studies were included. According to OCEBM 2011 Levels of Evidence Table, they were level 3 in 30.5% cases and level 4 in 69.5%. No RCT was found. Nineteen papers studied COVID-19 patients, assessed in the acute (10 studies), post-acute (8 studies) and chronic phase (one study). Four studies reported data on the impact of COVID-19 on subjects with pre-existing health conditions.

Conclusions: The current literature production still focuses more on describing all the possible aspects and complications of the pathology than on interventions or new organization models to deal with it. Albeit evidence on handling COVID-19 from a rehabilitative point of view is improving each month, further studies are still mandatory to report the role of rehabilitation in this scenario.