Effect of Telerehabilitation on Verbal and Visual Memory in Multiple Sclerosis Patients: A 12-month Follow-up Study

INTRODUCTION: Conditions such as chronic fatigue or physical disability, particularly regular work, limit the treatment options that require continuous participation in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The pandemic period highlighted the importance of home health services and increased interest in the current cognitive telerehabilitation (TR) applications. This study aims to determine the short and long-term effects of TR and the factors that influence it.
METHODS: This study included 61 MS patients. During 6 months, 32 patients (mean age =41.21±11.57; females =23 and males =9) received structured TR, and 29 patients (mean age =37.62±6.95; females =20 and males =9) received unstructured mental exercises. After the 6-month intervention period, another evaluation was conducted at the end of the 6-month silent period to evaluate the protective effect of the exercises. The participants were admi nistered with Rao’s Brief Repeatable Battery of neuropsychological tests at the beginning of the study and at the 6th and 12th months. The repeated measures analysis of variance was used to evaluate performance changes over time, and the repeated measures ANCOVA test was used to assess the factors affecting these changes.
RESULTS: On average, most participants (59.4%) used the TR application for less than 4 h each week. TR and unstructured exercises positively affected Spatial Recall Test-Total Learning/Con and Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test performances, and the total number of relapses affected these results. The total verbal learning Selective Reminding Test-Total Learning (SRT-TL), long-term storage (SRT-LTS), and delayed recall (SRT-DR) skills of all participants decreased at the end of the silent period. The factors affecting this deterioration are the duration of the disease, the total number of relapses, and the age of onset of the disease.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Our findings showed that TR and unstructured exercises had no differential effect on cognitive performance. In addition, the decrease in verbal memory performances in the silent period showed that the age of onset of the disease and the total number of relapses could be important evaluation criteria for cognitive involvement.