Review Effect of Physical Exercise-Based Rehabilitation on Long COVID: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis 2023 Zheng et al

Abstract

Purpose
The number of persons living with post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) conditions or long COVID continues to rise worldwide; however, the etiology and treatment of long COVID remain nebulous. Therefore, efficient, feasible, and cost-effective therapeutic strategies for a large population with long COVID remain warranted. Physical exercise-based rehabilitation is a promising strategy for long COVID, although its therapeutic effects remain to be determined. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the effects of physical exercise-based rehabilitation on long COVID.

Methods
The electronic databases Medline, Embase, Global Health (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), Web of Science, WHO Global Research Database on COVID-19, LitCovid, and Google Scholar were searched from their inception to November 2022. The identified articles were independently screened by three reviewers, and a random-effects model was utilized to determine the mean differences in the meta-analysis.

Results
Twenty-three studies involving 1,579 individuals who had COVID-19 (752 women) were included. Physical exercise-based rehabilitation showed beneficial effects on long COVID-related symptoms characterized by dyspnea, fatigue, and depression, as well as on the 6-minute walk test, forced expiratory volume in 1 second/forced vital capacity, and quality of life in people who had COVID-19.

Conclusions
Physical exercise-based rehabilitation is a potential therapeutic strategy against long COVID and can be applied as a routine clinical practice in people who have recovered from COVID-19. However, customized physical exercise-based rehabilitation programs and their effects on specific types of long COVID require future large-scale studies.

Paywall, https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/...ysical_exercise_based_rehabilitation.343.aspx

 

This is really the main issue with EBM and pragmatic trials. All it takes is for the trials to be run and somehow it becomes evidence. It doesn't matter that it has no impact, it can be justified in clinical use out of nothing at all. It doesn't matter that there is no useful evidence, the mere act of wanting it to be true is sufficient. Then it becomes tradition and it's unstoppable.

It's not as if whoever did this review can realistically be unaware that it has been the case from the start, that millions have already been put through this. And this is the thing about so-called evidence-based medicine: evidence is completely irrelevant. It's a political process where outcomes don't matter one bit. It's just completely detached from reality.