Seven-Year Intervention Rate and Effect of Early Rehabilitation in China: A National-Wide Hospital-Based Study.

The definition of 'early rehabilitation' relied solely on the presence of billing codes for therapy costs, meaning the study cannot distinguish between a patient who received one brief session and one who received intensive daily therapy. Because the data came from administrative records, it lacked clinical details such as the exact timing of the intervention relative to admission, the specific techniques used, or the severity of the patients' conditions at baseline. The study cannot prove that early rehabilitation caused the lower mortality. The authors note that hospitals offering rehabilitation might simply be better-resourced facilities that have lower mortality rates regardless of the therapy. The analysis did not adjust for the complexity of the patients' conditions or the specific reasons for hospitalization, meaning patients who received therapy may have been systematically different from those who did not. There is no control for the quality of care in non-rehabilitation departments, and the study could not verify if the billed rehabilitation was actually delivered or if it was clinically appropriate.

The funding source had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or manuscript drafting. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

Do not interpret the lower mortality in the rehabilitation group as proof that the therapy saved lives. The study only recorded whether rehabilitation was billed, not who was sicker or which hospitals provided the care, so the difference may reflect better overall hospital quality rather than the effect of the intervention.