Maarten van Egmond

105 The effectiveness of physiotherapy with telerehabilitation 5 Type Duration Frequency Intensity Outcome measurements New care module 6 weeks 1 x p/w 45 minutes Baseline 6 weeks FU New care module 2 months 2 x p/w Not specified Baseline 2, 4 months FU in addition to UC 5 weeks 6 calls in total 20 to 30 minutes Baseline 5 weeks FU In addition to UC 6 weeks Not specified Not specified Baseline 6, 12 weeks FU New care module 3 months Not specified Not specified 2, 6, 12 and 26 weeks All studies came to the conclusion that exercise interventions with telerehabilitation had the ability to improve at least one of the functional outcome measures reported. Studies reported that telerehabilitation was feasible 26,36-38 , not inferior to usual care 33,35 or equally as effective as usual care. 8,16,24,35,44 QoL increased significantly in 10 studies 24,25,27,29,30,35,40-43 in favor of the intervention with telerehabilitation. Tranmer and Parry 28 , van den Brink et al. 16 and Eakin et al. 36 did not find a difference in QoL between the intervention and control groups. Meta-analysis All included studies reported different types of interventions with telerehabilitation and different functional outcome measures, even after dividing the studies into three subgroups of patients (cardiac, orthopedic and oncological). Therefore, a meta-analysis on these outcomes was not appropriate. The authors were able to perform a meta-analysis on QoL because telerehabilitation is believed to have an effect on QoL in general. 16 Data from seven studies were sufficient to include for meta-analysis. 24,27,29-31,33,40 The overall pooled standardized mean difference for QoL for seven studies was 1.01 (95% confidence interval 0.18 to 1.84), indicating that QoL increased with telerehabilitation compared with usual care (Figure 2). The heterogeneity expressed with I 2 was high at 97%.