Review articleMedical Rehabilitation in Natural Disasters: A Review
Section snippets
Methods
A comprehensive, integrated approach was used to review the literature (peer review, gray literature) for medical rehabilitation interventions in natural disasters. A search of the peer-review literature was conducted using medical and health science electronic databases (MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library) from 2000 to September 2014. The terms natural disaster, disaster management, and rehabilitation interventions,
Results
The combined searches retrieved 2766 published titles and abstracts, of which 2751 were screened after removal of duplicates. Thirty-four abstracts met preliminary inclusion criteria, and full texts of these articles were assessed; 19 of these were excluded because of inappropriate study design (systematic reviews, narrative reviews, commentaries) or because they were not related to natural disasters. Four additional relevant articles were identified from bibliographies. Ten studies (2
Discussion
This systematic review provides an evidence-based overview of the effectiveness of various medical rehabilitation interventions used for survivors of natural disasters. A multipronged approach assimilated published literature for currently available evidence by including both qualitative and quantitative studies. The study highlights scarce research and a lack of robust, methodologically strong studies in this area. Most included studies were of poor quality as a result of multiple methodologic
Conclusions
This review highlights sparse literature and the lack of high-quality studies in rehabilitation after natural disasters. Assimilation of data from existing studies was difficult because of the diverse content, delivery of rehabilitation, and range of outcome measures used. Although evidence for effectiveness of rehabilitation in natural disaster victims is limited, the gap in current research should not be interpreted as ineffectiveness of rehabilitation in this population. The challenge is to
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Supported by internal resources of the Rehabilitation Department, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Royal Park Campus, Melbourne, Australia.
Disclosures: none.