What should a family physician know about nutrition and physical exercise rehabilitation’ advices to communicate to ‘long-term COVID-19’ patients?

Abstract

In real practice, there is a paradox in the management of patients with ‘long-term Covid-19.’ Indeed, Family physicians (FPs) are on the front line in the management process of these patients. For ‘long-term Covid-19’ patients, and according to the World Health Organization guideline, the cardiopulmonary rehabilitation (CPR) should be provided not only at tertiary- or secondary care but mainly at primary care with a real implication of FPs. However, specific guidelines/recommendations were addressed for FPs. Therefore, an alternative including the CPR minimal advice that an FP should provide to ‘long-term Covid-19’ patients, seems to be necessary to respond to the needs of FPs to face their involvement with ‘long-term Covid-19’ patients. Thus, this paper aimed to report the CPR ‘minimal advice’ that should be provided by FPs managing ‘long-term Covid-19’ patients with incapacity (i.e.; alteration of the cardiorespiratory and muscular chain). According to the authors, FPs should be more cautious in the prescription of exercise and nutrition program and informed about the minimal advices related to nutritional and physical exercise rehabilitation guidelines when taking care of ‘long-term Covid-19’ patients, and how these guidelines can relieve the mental and physical problems, improve immunity, and accelerate the recovery process of the patients. With the occurrence of new variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, the nutritional and exercise rehabilitation guidelines implemented by FPs become indispensable to promote the recovery of Covid-19 patients and support a return to normal life.