Cardiac telerehabilitation is a cost-effective alternative to centre-based rehabilitation, though widespread implementation is hindered by methodological limitations and lack of reimbursement.
Is cardiac telerehabilitation a feasible and effective alternative to centre-based cardiac rehabilitation for patients with cardiovascular disease?
Cardiac telerehabilitation offers a viable, cost-effective alternative to traditional centre-based rehabilitation that could improve participation rates, provided implementation barriers like reimbursement and standardization are addressed.
Multidisciplinary cardiac rehabilitation (CR) improves the prognosis and quality of life of patients with cardiovascular disease and has therefore received strong recommendations in international guidelines for the treatment of patients with chronic coronary syndromes and chronic heart failure. Aiming to both resolve several barriers that impede participation in CR and to improve the effectiveness of CR, cardiac telerehabilitation (CTR) has emerged as a cost-effective alternative to traditional, centre-based CR. Although the body of evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of CTR is large and still growing, real-life implementations are scarce, which may be due to insufficient knowledge about CTR interventions and due to the challenges its implementation comes with. Up to now, mainly exercise-related core components of CR and e‑coaching have been investigated in the setting of CTR. Translation of research findings to clinical practice may be hampered by methodological limitations present in most CTR studies, being selection bias of participants, lack of long-term follow-up, heterogeneity of studied interventions and the lack of robust outcome measures. Besides conducting highly needed implementation studies for CTR interventions, their implementation could be facilitated by the development of guideline-based, multidisciplinary and personalised CTR programmes and widespread reimbursement for CTR.
Brouwers et al. (Tue,) conducted a review in Cardiovascular disease. Cardiac telerehabilitation vs. Centre-based cardiac rehabilitation was evaluated. Cardiac telerehabilitation is a cost-effective alternative to centre-based rehabilitation, though widespread implementation is hindered by methodological limitations and lack of reimbursement.