Exercícios de reabilitação cardíaca em idosos na síndrome de Long COVID: uma revisão de escopo

Abstract

Background: The term Long COVID came to be used to describe the persistence of symptoms in patients who had COVID-19. In many cases, a compromise was observed and the appearance of comorbidities reported in the period after the disease, generating systemic changes followed by annoyances, including cardiopulmonary ones, thus characterizing the Long COVID syndrome. Objective: To verify how the cardiac rehabilitation process has been applied in elderly people who had Long COVID syndrome, analyzing the characteristics of the interventions, describing the profile of people investigated in these studies. Methods: This is a scoping survey, following the PRISMA roadmap. Eligibility criteria: The construction of the research question followed the PCC strategy where (P) were elderly with Long COVID syndrome (C) cardiac rehabilitation and (C) worldwide literature. Studies were included only when 1) they investigated cardiac rehabilitation protocols in Long COVID syndrome, 2) elderly people who had symptoms related to Long COVID syndrome, and 3) underwent cardiac rehabilitation exercises between 2020 and 2022. Sources of information: A systematic search was performed between April and May 2022 in Academic Search Premier databases via EBSCOhost, ARCA, BMC, BMJ, VHL via BIREME, CINAHL via EBSCOhost, COCHRANE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, MEDLINE via EBSCOhost, Capes Periodicals, PubMed, PubMed via MeSH, Scielo, Science, Science Direct via Clarivate, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, Web of Science and World Health Organization. Result: 490 studies were identified. In the screening process, 37 duplicate articles were excluded, resulting in 453 works. After classifying the title and abstract, 17 articles remained to be read in full, with 436 studies excluded at this stage because they did not meet the eligibility criteria at that time. Finally, 2 articles were selected and included as they answered the questions of this scoping review. Conclusion: The objective of this scoping review was to identify gaps in the literature, which can guide a future systematic review. In view of this, it is necessary to create a specific protocol for cardiac rehabilitation in elderly patients affected by the Long COVID syndrome, with the purpose of recovering the functionality of physical capacities prior to infection by the Sars-Cov-2 virus. Therefore, intensive research is necessary in order to produce new works aimed at cardiac rehabilitation of the elderly with Long COVID syndrome.