eHealth Interventions of Health Literacy for Stroke Survivors: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

eHealth literacy interventions have emerged as a new approach in management of stroke survivors. Its effect on knowledge and clinical outcomes presents an inconsistent result in literature.

We aim to evaluate the impact of eHealth interventions on health literacy, clinical metrics, adherence to healthy behaviors, stroke recurrence, mortality, and health-related quality of life in stroke survivors.

We systematically searched six databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, EMBASE, Web of Science, ProQuest) up to February 21, 2024, selecting articles that meet these criteria: (i) patients with stroke; (ii) intervention with education content; (iii) eHealth interventions included telehealth, mobile phone, internet or computer; (iv) randomized controlled trials. The mean differences (MD) and standardized mean differences (SMD) between groups were measured. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Cochrane tool.

From 16 studies involving 9646 participants, we observed that eHealth interventions significantly improved systolic blood pressure (MD = -2.78 mmHg, 95% confidence interval (CI) [-4.67 to -0.88], p = 0.004), medication adherence (SMD = 0.28, 95% CI [0.04 to 0.52], p = 0.023), and health-related quality of life (SMD = 0.21, 95% CI [0.04 to 0.37], p = 0.013). Meta-regression found that age modified the effect size of systolic blood pressure (p = 0.027). There was insufficient evidence to conclude effects on other outcomes. The quality of evidence was moderate. Outcome variation may be due to the diversity in eHealth intervention approaches. The limited number of studies precluded the subgroup analysis. More interactive interventions with longer follow-ups were more effective.

eHealth interventions may benefit stroke survivors in terms of blood pressure, medication adherence, and health-related quality of life.

eHealth literacy interventions could be implemented to improve the management of stroke survivors, especially in the context of resource limitations.

PROSPERO registration number: CRD42024502470.