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Table 3 Effect of additional AHA supervised exercise: summary of meta-analyses

From: The effect of delegation of therapy to allied health assistants on patient and organisational outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Outcome

No. of trials

No. of participants

MD/RR (95%CI), I2

Quality of evidence

(GRADE)

Discharge home

4 [29, 32, 36, 44]

696

RR 1.28 (1.03 to 1.59), I2 = 60%

Very Low a, b, d

Acute length of stay (days)

6 [29, 32, 36, 39, 42, 44]

1787

MD − 0.28 (− 0.54 to − 0.03), I2 = 0%

Low a, d

  1. AHA Allied health assistant, MD Mean difference, RR Risk ratio, GRADE Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation
  2. Negative MD favours additional AHA intervention group: Acute length of stay
  3. RR > 1 favours additional AHA intervention group: Discharge home
  4. Reason for downgrade: a – risk of bias: majority of trials have at least 4 items on the internal validity scale of the Downs and Black checklist that were not met; b – heterogeneity: I2 ≥ 25%; c – imprecision of result: large CI; d - majority of studies not RCT design