Managing Daily Participation via Tele-rehabilitation during the Corona Pandemic Among Breast Cancer Survivors

Research question: Is tele-rehabilitation feasible and successful in improving participation in daily activities for women with breast cancer (BC) during the pandemic? Background: Women with BC cope with decreased daily participation and quality of life (QOL) due to short and long-term physical, cognitive and emotional symptoms related to breast cancer and medical treatments. Coping with a pandemic causes restrictions in daily participation and especially for BC survivors that may also face increasing levels of symptoms’ severity. Tele-rehabilitation offers a way to deliver rehabilitation in order to provide strategies to reduce the impact of symptoms on daily participation and QOL, while reducing concerns regarding the vulnerable immune system such as crowded clinics during pandemic. Participants: Fourteen women with a mean age of 48.7 years (standard deviation 12.3) completed the study. The mean time since diagnosis was 17.5 months (standard deviation 8.4). Twelve (85.7%) participants have been working before diagnosis and half of them has not returned to work during the research. Key results: Participation in five meaningful daily activities that were set as treatment goals, significantly improved from pre to post intervention. In addition, participation in other daily activities significantly improved from pre to post intervention. However, participation levels did not reach the level before diagnosis. Limitations: A control group was not included, and the sample size