Pulmonary rehabilitation for COVID-19: A living systematic review protocol

This living systematic review aims to provide a timely, rigorous and continuously updated summary of the evidence available on the role of pulmonary rehabilitation in the treatment of patients with COVID-19.

This is the protocol of a living systematic review.

We will conduct searches in the L·OVE (Living OVerview of Evidence) platform for COVID-19, a system that maps PICO questions to a repository maintained through regular searches in electronic databases, preprint servers, trial registries and other resources relevant to COVID-19. No date or language restrictions will be applied.

We adapted an already published common protocol for multiple parallel systematic reviews to the specificities of this question. We will include randomized trials evaluating the effect of pulmonary rehabilitation as monotherapy or in combination with other interventions-versus sham or no treatment in patients with COVID-19. Two reviewers will independently screen each study for eligibility, extract data, and assess the risk of bias. We will pool the results using meta-analysis and will apply the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system to assess the certainty of the evidence for each outcome.

No ethics approval is considered necessary. The results of this review will be widely disseminated via peer-reviewed publications, social networks and traditional media.