The international classification of functioning, disability and health (ICF) and rehabilitation: what has been done?

Background: rehabilitation has as its emphasis, not only the disease and your treatment, as well as improved Functioning. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) is a classification system endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2001. ICF brings a new paradigm by changing the focus on the consequences of the disease to highlight Functioning as a dynamic interaction between the biomedical and social model. Purpose: to conduct a brief description of ICF use in scientific movement of the ICF use in Rehabilitation. Methodology: The databases used were Medline, Scielo, Bireme, PEDro, and Scopus. The outcomes examined were ICF use and protocol, study design and expertise area. Results: 121 articles were included in this mapping. There was a predominance of ICF use in Neurology (n=52) and the most study design used was cross-sectional (n=55). Most of the studies used ICF to develop, validate or analyze functional assessments (n=52). Conclusion: the results indicate heterogeneity in the ICF diffusion in rehabilitation. The increase of ICF knowledge as a guiding model in Rehabilitation seems to be consolidating, however, intervention and longitudinal design studies still underrepresented. The ICF should be incorporated as a considerable framework to structure functional outcomes.