Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Study designs: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis
Abstract: Patients with knee osteoarthritis walk slower than their healthy peers.But then, many other subject characteristics may affect walking speed, and also walk-test methodology is known to have a major impact.In the present study, a metaanalysis was performed of published walking speed differences between groups of knee osteoarthritis patients and controls.Meta-regression was used to examine in how far subject characteristics and methodology contributed significantly to the variance of effect-sizes.Patients walked on average 1.08 m/s, controls 1.25 m/s, with an effect-size of about 1.In other words, patients walked 1 standard-deviation slower than controls.Within-study variance, however, was only 20%, with 80% between-study variance.Thus, the reported effect-size is ballpark only, far from a precise estimate.The age difference between patients and controls, the severity of the knee osteoarthritis, and the number of co-morbid conditions, together accounted for 36% of the betweenstudy variance, that is, 28% of the total variance.These results can be used to improve future studies, i.e., matching for age, and registering disease severity as well as number of co-morbid conditions.More research will be needed to assess how much of the remaining 52% unexplained variance is due to methodology, other subject characteristics, or their interaction.
Author: H. Abbasibafghi
Language: English
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1537575465