Long-term integrated telerehabilitation of COPD patients: a multicentre randomised controlled trial (iTrain)

Zanaboni, P; Dinesen, B; Hjalmarsen, A; Hoaas, H; Holland, Anne; Oliveira, CC; Wootton, R

doi:10.26181/22358152.v1

77559_Zanaboni,P_2016.pdf (721.53 kB)

Long-term integrated telerehabilitation of COPD patients: a multicentre randomised controlled trial (iTrain)

journal contribution

posted on 2023-03-30, 03:09 authored by P Zanaboni, B Dinesen, A Hjalmarsen, H Hoaas, Anne HollandAnne Holland, CC Oliveira, R Wootton

Background: Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is an effective intervention for the management of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, available resources are often limited, and many patients bear with poor availability of programmes. Sustaining PR benefits and regular exercise over the long term is difficult without any exercise maintenance strategy. In contrast to traditional centre-based PR programmes, telerehabilitation may promote more effective integration of exercise routines into daily life over the longer term and broaden its applicability and availability. A few studies showed promising results for telerehabilitation, but mostly with short-term interventions. The aim of this study is to compare long-term telerehabilitation with unsupervised exercise training at home and with standard care. Methods/Design: An international multicentre randomised controlled trial conducted across sites in three countries will recruit 120 patients with COPD. Participants will be randomly assigned to telerehabilitation, treadmill and control, and followed up for 2 years. The telerehabilitation intervention consists of individualised exercise training at home on a treadmill, telemonitoring by a physiotherapist via videoconferencing using a tablet computer, and self-management via a customised website. Patients in the treadmill arm are provided with a treadmill only to perform unsupervised exercise training at home. Patients in the control arm are offered standard care. The primary outcome is the combined number of hospitalisations and emergency department presentations. Secondary outcomes include changes in health status, quality of life, anxiety and depression, self-efficacy, subjective impression of change, physical performance, level of physical activity, and personal experiences in telerehabilitation. Discussion: This trial will provide evidence on whether long-term telerehabilitation represents a cost-effective strategy for the follow-up of patients with COPD. The delivery of telerehabilitation services will also broaden the availability of PR and maintenance strategies, especially to those living in remote areas and with no access to centre-based exercise programmes.

Funding

This study was funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project Grant 228919/H10) and the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority (Project Grants HST1117-13 and HST1118-13).

History

Publication Date

2016-08-22

Journal

BMC Pulmonary Medicine

Volume

16

Issue

1

Article Number

126

Pagination

9p.

Publisher

BioMed Central

ISSN

1471-2466

Rights Statement

© 2016 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.