On 26 July researchers from Jiangsu, Hubei, and Sichuan published the first randomised-controlled clinical trial evaluating a telerehabilitation program for patients with Covid-19 in one of the world leading pulmonology journals BMJ-Thorax. Under the leadership of Professors Jian’an LI, MD from Jiangsu Province Hospital/Nanjing Medical University and Jan D. REINHARDT, PhD from Sichuan University, IDMR.

120 Covid-19 patients from Jiangsu and Hubei were randomly allocated to either an intervention group or a control group. All patients had remaining medical complaints after discharge from hospital. The intervention group received a pulmonary rehabilitation program for 6-week delivered through a smartphone application called RehabApp developed by the Chinese company Recovery Plus Inc., Chengdu. Vital functions such as heart-rate and oxygen saturation were remotely monitored during exercise. The control group only received general medical advice. Over a 7 months observation period, functional exercise capacity, lower limb muscle strength, and quality of life was improved to a significantly greater degree in the telerehabiliation group (TERECO) than in the control group. Figure 1 shows the effect on the primary outcome functional exercise capacity measured as distance in meters that patients could walk in 6 minutes. Baseline is before the intervention, post-treatment is immediately after the intervention at 6 weeks, and follow-up is at 28 weeks.

The trial gives new hope to patients with long-term symptoms and functional limitations after Covid-19. The publication in Thorax is open access and available under URL: https://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2021/07/25/thoraxjnl-2021-217382 .

The protocol of this trial is available from IDMR’s website URL: http://idmr.scu.edu.cn/info.htm?id=1841614474692833 .

The trial has been registered in the Chinese Clinical Trials Registry under ChiCTR2000031834, URL: http://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=52216