A UK-wide trial, managed by Warwick Medical School, finds that online rehabilitation at home can meaningfully improve quality of life for some intensive care survivors. The iRehab Trial tested an online rehabilitation program for people recovering at home after being on a ventilator in intensive care. The trial was conducted across 52 NHS hospitals and managed by Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, with leadership from Ulster University and Queen's University Belfast.
Overall, the program did not show a significant benefit in quality of life at the eight-week follow-up. However, patients who had been ventilated for less than a week saw substantially greater improvements in quality of life than those ventilated for longer, suggesting that online home-based rehabilitation can be worthwhile for people following shorter periods of ventilation.
The results were presented at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Conference in Orlando and published in JAMA.
Professor Brenda O'Neill, Chief Investigator of the iRehab Trial, said, "The iRehab program helped many people to recover after they went home from the intensive care unit. Rehabilitation for survivors of critical illness is underfunded, but findings from the iRehab trial demonstrate that fully remote processes in health care research and delivery are feasible from the consent stage through to intervention delivery."
