Effect of smartphone monitoring on patients; physical functioning after arthroplasty surgery: Systematic review and meta-analysis

The research was planned as a meta-analysis study to examine the effect of smartphone monitoring after arthroplasty surgery on the physical functionality of patients. Scientific articles from the last 24 years (2000-2024) were scanned from Scopus, ScienceDirect, PubMed, GoogleScholar databases. In the scan, the words "nurse", "arthroplasty", "smartphone", "orthopedics", "physical functionality", "application" were scanned in Turkish and English. A total of 2,786 studies were identified in the research. As inclusion criteria; The research was determined to be related to arthroplasty surgery, the studies to be randomized controlled studies, studies with full text access, studies from the last 24 years, scientific articles, studies published in Turkish and English. Among 2,786 studies, 965 studies whose publication languages were other than Turkish and English and 215 duplicates obtained from different databases were eliminated. The remaining 1,606 studies were coded by taking into account the keywords of the study, and 721 studies without arthroplasty surgery and 547 studies without distinction between nurses were excluded from the study. Of the remaining 338 studies, 151 studies that did not include randomized controlled trials, 101 studies that did not measure physical functionality, and 63 studies that did not include smartphone monitoring were excluded from the study. Among the remaining 23 studies, 14 articles that did not have full text access were not included in the study. The study was conducted with 5 articles that met our research criteria. Funnel Plot and Egger Test were used to demonstrate that the meta-analysis study was reliable and valid and to determine publication bias. Effect sizes of 5 studies examining the effect of smartphone follow-up on patients' physical functionality after arthroplasty surgery were evaluated according to Funnel Plot and Forest Plot. As a result of the research, it was determined that the physical functionality of patients monitored with a smartphone during arthroplasty surgery was statistically significant compared to patients monitored with traditional rehabilitation methods.