I live in a rural area and am planning to have my knee replaced soon. There is not a good option for in home physical therapy, but my doctor has recommended a clinic that will set up tele rehabilitation sessions. Is this as good as having a therapist come to my home, or should I try to get into town to see one?

This is a problem for many people in all areas of medicine and with improvements in internet access telemedicine is increasing. There haven’t been too many studies on comparing the quality of these services as far as physical therapy is concerned. However there has been on recent study by Moffat et al, published in July 2015. In this study they were able to have two large sample sizes for two groups, one receiving at home face to face PT following knee replacement and the other receiving at home video based PT. The results of their study are promising that there is very little to no difference between the outcomes for these two groups. This results of this study indicate that if you have the option for tele rehabilitation it can be a good option.