Baduanjin exercise is a traditional Chinese health-Qigong routine, created by an ancient physician for health promotion. Its mild-to-moderate exercise intensity is suitable for individuals with medical conditions. Recently, a large number of trials were conducted to investigate the effects of Baduanjin exercise in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It needs to be determined whether Baduanjin exercise prescription is beneficial for the management of COPD patients. Thus, we conducted a systematic review to objectively evaluate the existing literature on this topic. We searched six databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus, CNKI, and Wanfang) from its inception till early May, 2018. The adapted PEDro scale was used for study quality assessment of all randomized controlled trials (RCT). The pooled effect size (Hedge’s g) of exercise capability (6-Minute Walking Test, 6-MWT), lung function parameters (forced expiratory volume in first second, FEV1; forced volume vital capacity, FVC; FEV1/FVC ratio), and quality of life were calculated based on the random-effects model. Twenty RCTs (n = 1975 COPD patients) were included in this review, with sum scores of the adapted PEDro scale between 5 and 9. Study results of meta-analysis indicate that Baduanjin is effective in improving exercise capability (Hedge’s g = 0.69, CI 0.44 to 0.94, p < 0.001, I2 = 66%), FEV1 (Hedge’s g = 0.47, CI 0.22 to 0.73, p < 0.001, I2 = 68.01%), FEV1% (Hedge’s g = 0.38, CI 0.21 to 0.56, p < 0.001, I2 = 54.74%), FVC (Hedge’s g = 0.39, CI 0.22 to 0.56, p < 0.001, I2 = 14.57%), FEV1/FVC (Hedge’s g = 0.5, CI 0.33 to 0.68, p < 0.001, I2 = 53.49%), and the quality of life of COPD patients (Hedge’ s g = - 0.45, CI -0.77 to - 0.12, p < 0.05, I2 = 77.02%), as compared to control groups. Baduanjin exercise as an adjunctive treatment may potentially improve exercise capability and pulmonary function of COPD patients as well as quality of life. Baduanjin exercise could be tentatively prescribed for COPD in combination with the conventional rehabilitation program to quicken the process of recovery. To confirm the positive effects of Baduanjin exercise for COPD patients, future researchers need to consider our suggestions mentioned in this article.

Instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) training is critical in clinical practice of occupational therapy (OT) for stroke patients. In the conventional approaches, the therapists simulate various occupational tasks in their healthcare settings or reach their nearby real circumstances for the training. As an alternative technology, immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been used widely in stroke rehabilitation for years; however, limited research has compared occupational performances between virtual and real environments. Our team has established a novel IVR shopping training system for stroke rehabilitation. We recruited 10 stroke patients from our department to test the system. All patients attempted to implement shopping tasks in the virtual and real environments respectively. The Wilcoxon test showed no significant differences between virtual and real environments in memory capacity and time-consuming for implementing tasks, and memory capacities in virtual and real environments presented excellent correlations with the IADL assessment. This study suggests that IVR shopping tasks can be used as an alternative approach in rehabilitation when there is limited resource for implementing shopping training in a real environment, while the psychometric property, clinical effect and the effect transferred to the real environment induced by virtual training require further study.