Mayer-Huber, Sandra, Kircher, Alissa, Eberhartinger, Maria et al. · Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)) · 2024 · DOI
This review looked at 14 published studies about ways to treat people with severe ME/CFS who are homebound or bedbound. The researchers found that the most helpful approaches were either home visits from healthcare providers or telemedicine (video/phone appointments). The studies highlighted that treatment works best when it's flexible, tailored to each person's daily needs, and includes family members in the care plan.
Severely affected ME/CFS patients face unique barriers to receiving care, and this review identifies practical, accessible treatment delivery models (home visits and telemedicine) that could reduce patient burden. The emphasis on individualized, flexible care and family involvement reflects the specific challenges of managing a disease with unpredictable daily symptoms, offering evidence-based guidance for future service development and research design.
This scoping review does not establish the efficacy of any specific treatment intervention—it only describes delivery methods and care structures reported in existing literature. The review cannot prove that home visits or telemedicine are more effective than in-person clinic visits, as most included studies lacked rigorous comparative designs. It also does not evaluate specific therapeutic content, only the organizational models in which care is delivered.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Mayer-Huber, Sandra, Kircher, Alissa, Eberhartinger, Maria, Stojanov, Silvia, & Behrends, Uta (2024). [Multimodal Treatment Strategies for Homebound Patients with Severe ME/CFS: A Scoping Review].. Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)). https://doi.org/10.1055/a-2323-4108
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-mayer-huber-2024-multimodal-treatment,
author = {Mayer-Huber, Sandra and Kircher, Alissa and Eberhartinger, Maria and Stojanov, Silvia and Behrends, Uta},
title = {[Multimodal Treatment Strategies for Homebound Patients with Severe ME/CFS: A Scoping Review].},
journal = {Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany))},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1055/a-2323-4108},
note = {PubMed: 38729210},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/mayer-huber-2024-multimodal-treatment},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/mayer-huber-2024-multimodal-treatment
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