Effect of a transitional tele-rehabilitation programme on quality of life of adult burn survivors: A randomised controlled trial.

To examine the effects of the transitional tele-rehabilitation programme on quality of life of adult burn survivors. A prospective, single centre, randomised controlled trial and reported according to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines. Adult burn survivors aged ≥18 years with burn size ≥10% total body surface area irrespective of the depth was considered eligible to participate. The intervention was in two phases: pre-discharge and active follow-up phase (which occurred via WeChat). In both phases, comprehensive assessment and intervention guided by the Omaha System and evidenced-based protocols guided the care delivery over an 8-week period. The outcome of interest was quality of life. Two outcome measures were used to assess the outcome of interest: Burn Specific Health Scale-Brief (BSHS-B) and the EQ-5D-5L tools. The outcome was assessed at three time points: T0 (baseline), T1 (immediate post-intervention) and T2 (4 weeks from T1). In total, 60 adult burn survivors were randomly allocated to undergo the new programme. The transitional tele-rehabilitation programme elicited statistically significant improvement in simple abilities, affect, interpersonal relationship (T2) and overall quality life (T1 and T2) measured on the BSHS-B. Ongoing rehabilitative care is essential to support the recovery process of burn survivors considering that some quality-of-life subscales may improve faster than others. The study findings highlight the potential of employing a social media platform to improve post-burn quality of life outcomes. ClinicalTrials.govNCT04517721. Registered on 20 August 2020.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.