Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The major objective of physiotherapy is to rehabilitate the patient and improve his quality of life. There has been an increase in the search for evidence-based physical therapies that are effective and could therefore be useful for clinical practice. In order to identify these interventions, it is necessary to map the existing Cochrane Systematic Reviews on physiotherapy and select those that are effective.
Objectives: Identify Cochrane Systematic Reviews in physiotherapy that report effective interventions from a clinical perspective.
Methods: We developed a search strategy to identify complete Cochrane Reviews on physiotherapy publisehd in the Cochrane Library up to Issue 2, 2013. Inclusion criteria: reviews related to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of physiotherapy techniques [‘Physical Therapy Modalities’ (Mesh)]. Exclusion criteria: invasive procedures, pharmacologic therapy and complementary therapies (i.e., acupuncture, antiinflammatories, balneotherapy, music therapy). Retrieved reviews were screened by two independent investigators (GP and MFST) to select potentially relevant reviews. Disagreement was arbitrated by a third author (VS).
Results: The search strategy identified 245 reviews, 66 were excluded and 181 reviews were selected for full-text reading resulting in 52 reviews (28.7%) with effective interventions that could potentially be used in clincal practice.
Conclusions: Only 28.7% of Cochrane Systematic reviews on physiotherapy report effective interventions that could potentially be used in clinical practice.
Objectives: Identify Cochrane Systematic Reviews in physiotherapy that report effective interventions from a clinical perspective.
Methods: We developed a search strategy to identify complete Cochrane Reviews on physiotherapy publisehd in the Cochrane Library up to Issue 2, 2013. Inclusion criteria: reviews related to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of physiotherapy techniques [‘Physical Therapy Modalities’ (Mesh)]. Exclusion criteria: invasive procedures, pharmacologic therapy and complementary therapies (i.e., acupuncture, antiinflammatories, balneotherapy, music therapy). Retrieved reviews were screened by two independent investigators (GP and MFST) to select potentially relevant reviews. Disagreement was arbitrated by a third author (VS).
Results: The search strategy identified 245 reviews, 66 were excluded and 181 reviews were selected for full-text reading resulting in 52 reviews (28.7%) with effective interventions that could potentially be used in clincal practice.
Conclusions: Only 28.7% of Cochrane Systematic reviews on physiotherapy report effective interventions that could potentially be used in clinical practice.