The Safety of Telerehabilitation: Systematic Review.
Hila Shnitzer, Josh Chan, Thomas Yau and 7 others
PMID 40632682WHAT IT FOUND
Across 37 randomized trials, telerehabilitation produced 201 adverse events in 65,352 sessions, most mild and unrelated to the intervention.
No serious event was linked to the remote therapy itself.
Key findings
01Across 65,352 telerehabilitation sessions, 201 adverse events were recorded, a rate of 0.31 per 100 sessions.
02Among the 9 studies that reported severity, 7 classified events as mild or nonserious. Among the 11 that documented relatedness, 8 found events unrelated to the intervention. No study reported a serious adverse event linked to telerehabilitation.
0368% of included studies (25 of 37) reported zero adverse events in either the telerehabilitation or control group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
76% of the included studies (28 of 37) provided insufficient detail on adverse event severity and relatedness, so the true picture of what went wrong is incomplete. Five studies had intervention groups of fewer than 10 participants, limiting their ability to detect differences in event rates. Only 1 study each covered burns and cancer rehabilitation, and no study had a mean participant age under 18, so findings may not generalise to those populations. RCT participants tend to be healthier and have fewer comorbidities than the patients a therapist sees in clinic, which may overstate the safety of telerehabilitation for complex patients. No meta-analysis was performed, so the review cannot give a single pooled event rate. Only English-language studies were included, potentially excluding relevant evidence from other countries.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 0.31-per-100-sessions rate as proof that telerehabilitation is safe for every patient you treat. 76% of the included studies reported insufficient detail on severity and relatedness, and RCT participants typically lack the complex comorbidities and cognitive deficits that make many of your patients more vulnerable. The safety signal is reassuring but incomplete.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →