Investigation of the effectiveness of telerehabilitation in rheumatic patients in the COVID-19 pandemic process

This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of telerehabilitation in rheumatic patients during the COVID-19 pandemic process. The patients were divided into the exercise group and the control group according to their acceptance to participate in the exercise group. Before starting the study, the daily living activities of the patients were evaluated with the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), their anxiety and depression levels with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and their biopsychosocial status with the Cognitive Exercise Therapy Approach-Biopsychosocial Questionnaire (BETY-BQ). Exercise group (n=23) participated in BETY telerehabilitation sessions as a group via using WhatsApp application. The control group (n=12) was followed up with medication. BETY telerehabilitation treatment was given to the patients in the exercise group in the presence of a physiotherapist for 8 weeks, 3 days a week. At the end of 8 weeks, all questionnaires were repeated for both groups. When the activity was examined within the group, improvement was observed in the HADS anxiety and depression sub-parameters in the exercise group (p<0.05). BETY-BQ score decreased in the direction of improvement in both groups, these changes did not make a statistically significant difference (p>0.05). Although the HAQ score worsened in the control group, it improved in the exercise group, but the changes did not make a statistically significant difference (p>0.05). In the control group, it was observed that the HADS anxiety score improved, the HADS depression score worsened and these changes did not make a statistically significiant difference (p>0.05). As a result of the study, it was concluded that the BETY telerehabilitation approach is an alternative for rheumatic patients who cannot go to clinics for treatment in cases such as the COVID-19 pandemic process and have an increased tendency to physical inactivity. Although it is difficult to implement biopsychosocial approaches remotely, it was observed that BETY could improve anxiety and depression levels, and preserve their biopsychosocial status and quality of life with telerehabilitation. It was concluded that conducting comparative studies with different telerehabilitation methods and investigating the long-term follow-up results will increase the value of the study.