Maarten van Egmond

100 Chapter 5 Study characteristics This review included 3424 patients in total. Overall, 56% (N = 1910) were female. The lowest mean age reported in any of the included studies was 43.2 [standard deviation (SD) 8.5] years and the highest reported mean age was 83.0 (SD 8.0) years. Among the 23 included studies, seven studies reported on cardiac surgery (n = 1150) 24,26-29,42 , eight studies reported on orthopedic surgery (n = 878) 8,30-35,43 , and eight studies reported on oncological surgery in the abdominal, thoracic and cervical regions (n = 1396). 16,36-41,44 A variety of inclusion and exclusion criteria have been reported. The majority of studies included patients who were discharged home or to short-term rehabilitation, who had a telephone or access to high-speed internet services, and had no communication disorders. Reported exclusion criteria were significant cognitive deficits and any concomitant medical conditions that influenced rehabilitation or precluded safe participation in exercises. Type of interventions The majority of studies implemented the intervention as a new care module for something that did not exist previously (n = 17) 8,24,26,27,29,30,32-38,40,42-44 , and six studies implemented the intervention in addition to existing care. All interventions started after surgery, apart from the study by Vonk Noordegraaf et al. 40 that started 4 weeks before surgery. Interventions with telerehabilitation were aimed at physical exercise training (n = 10) or at education, information and support (n = 13). Physiotherapists, exercise specialists, exercise physiologists or physicians provided all interventions aimed at physical exercise, while interventions aimed at education, information and support were predominantly provided by nurses. The type of telerehabilitation technology used was a telephone in 14 studies, videoconferencing in three studies, the internet in three studies, and a specific e-Health technology device in three studies. Considerable variation was seen in duration, type, frequency and intensity of the interventions. The duration ranged from 3 days to 13 months, with a mean of 3.71 (SD 2.97) months. The frequency of telerehabilitation sessions varied from once per day to once per month, with an intensity of 10 minute to 1 hour per session. All patients were measured at baseline before surgery and after the intervention, and many studies undertook one or two follow-up measurements to evaluate the intervention. Intervention details are shown in Table 2. Types of outcome measures The main findings from the included studies are described in Table 1.