Exploring maintenance rehabilitation in adults with chronic conditions: a scoping review of the literature.
Tonya L Rich, Marcelo A Silva, Frederica O'Donnell and 3 others
PMID 39440854WHAT IT FOUND
Most maintenance therapy programs for chronic conditions focus on physical activity, with 87% of studies using movement-based interventions.
Only 3% targeted cognition and 4% involved speech-language pathology. Programs are typically in-person, individual, and 60 minutes long, with 89% reporting positive results.
Key findings
01Physical activity or movement-based interventions were the primary focus of maintenance therapy, appearing in 87% of the 90 included works.
02Speech-language pathology was involved in only 4 of the 90 works, and cognitive interventions were the focus in just 3% of programs.
03Authors reported positive results in 89% of the included works, though the review notes that skilled maintenance therapy is not well defined and outcomes are heterogeneous.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The definition of maintenance therapy is not consistently applied in clinical practice, leading to potential under-reporting or misclassification of studies. Only 16% of works reported race and 6% reported ethnicity, limiting the generalizability of findings to diverse populations. The review is descriptive and does not assess the quality of individual studies or perform a meta-analysis, so the 'positive results' reported by authors cannot be weighted by methodological rigor. Heterogeneity in intervention descriptions (e.g., lack of detail on duration or focus) makes it difficult to replicate specific programs.
Declared interests
The authors report no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the 89% positive result rate applies to all disciplines. This figure is driven by cardiac and pulmonary physical activity programs; the evidence for cognitive and speech-language maintenance is minimal (3% and 4 works respectively), so those results cannot be generalized to your specific patient population.