Physiotherapy Rehabilitation in Post Intensive Care Syndrome: a systematic review

Abstract

ABSTRACT Introduction: Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PTIS) is a set of signs and symptoms that persist after the discharge of survivors from an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and promotes loss of physical and cognitive capacity. Thus, rehabilitation is essential to restore functional capacity (FC), activities of daily living and, consequently, the quality of life (QoL) of these individuals. Objective: To verify the physiotherapeutic treatments available for rehabilitation in SPTI, also analyzing which physiotherapeutic methods bring more benefits and which are more effective. Materials and methods: the PICO strategy: population, intervention, comparison, outcome, was used, investigating patients with SPTI (population), physical rehabilitation (intervention), conventional clinical treatment (comparison), evaluating functional capacity, quality of life and strength muscle (outcome). Two independent reviewers searched five databases (PubMed, PEDro, SciELO, Cochrane, Google Academic) until August 2022. Study quality was determined using the PEDro scale. Result: The initial search returned 4783 articles. Of these, 2497 were selected after reading the title and abstract for full text evaluation. In the end, 5 remained based on preestablished eligibility criteria. The qualitative analysis of the studies indicated that resistance training (RT) significantly increased quality of life and global muscle strength and, RT associated with training aerobic exercise (AT) improves the quality of life, functional capacity and strength of volunteers with PTIS. Conclusion: Physiotherapeutic rehabilitation increases strength and functional capacity and improves quality of life for people with SPTI. More studies, with a low level of bias, are needed to increase the level of evidence for the findings. Keywords: Post intensive therapy syndrome; Physiotherapeutic rehabilitation; ICU; PICS; COVID-19