Systematic review of home physiotherapy after hip fracture surgery.

OBJECTIVE

To compare the benefits of home physiotherapy, institution-based physiotherapy and no physiotherapy following hip fracture surgery.

DESIGN

Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

METHODS

Two reviewers independently extracted data from 5 included studies. Standardized mean differences were pooled for health-related quality of life and performance-based outcomes. Review Manager Version 5 was used for data analysis.

RESULTS

Analysis of the 5 included studies indicated that home physiotherapy was better than no physiotherapy and similar to outpatient physiotherapy in improving patient-reported health-related quality of life. Performance-based outcomes were marginally better following outpatient physiotherapy compared with home physiotherapy 3 and 6 months after surgery. The risk of bias was high for most outcomes due to methodological issues in the included studies.

DISCUSSION

There was a trend of better results with increasing intensity of physiotherapy intervention, but this did not convert into significant effect sizes. The results of this review do not build a strong consensus for recommending one mode of physiotherapy over the others. The quality of evidence was low mainly due to the high risk of bias in the included studies.

CONCLUSION

In light of no strong consensus, physiotherapists should continue to follow their current workplace practice policies for determining suitable discharge settings.