Telemedicine In Secondary Prevention And Rehabilitation Of Stroke During The Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in limited access of post-stroke patients to their usual medical follow-up and rehabilitation. To continue these activities, we adopted a technology that is free and has universal access. We remotely followed 32 patients after discharge from the stroke unit during the mandatory lock-down. This allowed to continue with medical controls, physical therapy and speech pathology treatments. All patients fully complied with medical treatment and self-monitoring of vascular risk factors. Early discontinuation of rehabilitation therapies was identified and immediately compensated with tele-rehabilitation. All expressed their willingness to continue with this treatment modality. This strategy was successful to effectively continue medical follow-up and rehabilitation supervision with the collaboration of families, is an accessible and low-cost technology that could be replicated and used in health institutions that treat neurovascular diseases.