Home-Based Exercise Therapy in the Management of Intermittent Claudication: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The current literature strongly supports the use of supervised exercise therapy (SET) as the first-line treatment for symptomatic peripheral arterial disease (PAD) such as intermittent claudication (IC). However, this form of treatment remains underutilised in clinical practice. The home-based exercise therapy (HBET), in which patients must conduct themselves unsupervised is generally less effective than SET in terms of improving functional walking capacity. Nevertheless, it may be a useful alternative where SET is unavailable. The objective of this systematic review is to determine the effectiveness of HBET in reducing symptoms of IC in patients with PAD. Studies eligible for inclusion in this systematic review were parallel-group randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published in the English language that compared the effect of HBET to a comparator arm (SET or no exercise/attention control) in adults with PAD and IC. Studies were eligible if outcome measures were available at baseline and at 12 weeks of follow-up or more. The electronic databases PubMed, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Library were searched from the earliest records up to January 2021. The Cochrane Collaboration risk of bias tool for RCTs (RoB 2) was used to assess the risk of bias in individual studies, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) classification system was used to appraise the quality of evidence for each outcome across all studies. The primary investigator independently collected, pooled, and analysed the data. The data was then entered into the ReviewManager 5 (RevMan 5) software, and a meta-analysis was performed by using a fixed or random effects model depending on the presence or absence of statistical heterogeneity. The review author identified seven RCTs involving a total of 754 patients which were included in this study. Overall, the risk of bias in the included studies was moderate. Even though the results were variable, this analysis supported the ability of HBET to improve functional walking capacity and self-reported quality of life (QoL) to an extent. This review shows that a home-based exercise intervention with regular professional support and encouragement is beneficial in improving functional walking capacity as well as some aspects of QoL in patients with PAD and IC when compared to no exercise. However, when HBET is compared to hospital-based supervised exercise intervention, SET yields greater benefits.