Effectiveness of interventions to support the transition home after acute stroke: a protocol for a systematic review

Background Despite advances in the quality of acute stroke management, there are gaps in knowledge about effective support interventions to better manage the transition of care to home for patients with this complex condition. The goal of this systematic review is to explore the literature around support interventions available for patients as they navigate from acute hospital, rehabilitation or early supported discharge (ESD) services to independent living at home; and to establish if, in comparison with usual care or other comparative active interventions, support services offered to patients as they transition from acute hospital, inpatient rehabilitation/ESD to home, can achieve better patient and / or process outcomes. Protocol In June 2021, we will carry out, on electronic peer-reviewed databases, a comprehensive literature search based on a pre-defined search strategy, developed and conducted in collaboration with an Information Specialist. In an effort to identify all published trials we will perform citation tracking of included studies, check reference lists of relevant articles, review grey literature, and extend our search to google scholar. We will include randomised controlled trials (including cluster and quasi-randomisation) recruiting stroke patients transitioning to home, to receive either usual care or any support intervention designed to improve outcomes after stroke. The primary clinical outcome will be functional status. Two review authors will scrutinise trials, categorise them on their eligibility, and extract data. We will analyse the results for all trials and perform meta-analyses where possible. We will assess risk of bias for the included trials and use GRADE to assess the quality of the body of evidence. Patient and public involvement (PPI) engaged in the development of the research questions, and will participate in co-design of a strategy for dissemination of findings. Conclusions: The findings from this review will be used to identify knowledge gaps to direct future research.