Effectiveness of physiotherapy on quality of life in children with asthma: Study protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Asthma is the most common chronic lung disease in childhood, leading to a great burden to the healthcare system worldwide. Despite the medication treatment, physiotherapy is now applied for asthmatic children aiming to improve their lung function and life quality. However, the effectiveness of physiotherapy on quality of life (QoL) in children with asthma is not clear. We are aiming to perform this study to provide some evidence to doctors on asthma treatment. METHODS: PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library will be searched from their inception to 31 March 2019 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in English, which investigated the effectiveness of physiotherapy on QoL in children with asthma. Besides, additional studies will be searched by scanning the reference lists of studies and the relevant systematic reviews. Two authors will select the studies, extract the data, and assess the risk of bias independently. Data synthesis and statistical analysis will be performed in Review manager 5.3. Stata 14.0 will be used to assess the reporting bias. Quality of evidence will be evaluated based on the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system. RESULTS: The results will provide information on the effectiveness of physiotherapy on QoL in children with asthma and further demonstrate which physiotherapy is more effective and which domain of QoL could be improved significantly. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study will provide the latest evidence on the effectiveness of physiotherapy on QoL in children with asthma. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42019133181.