BackgroundExercise therapy is an important treatment option for people with
intermittent claudication (IC). Appropriate reporting of exercise
interventions in populations with IC within randomised controlled trials
(RCTs) is important to ensure that research can be translated into clinical
practice. Therefore, the purpose of our review is to evaluate the reporting
of exercise interventions in RCTs of exercise therapy in patients with
IC.MethodsA systematic search was performed to identify relevant trials in patients
with IC published until May 2020. Studies including only participants with
critical limb ischaemia or asymptomatic peripheral artery disease were
excluded. Each trial was scored using the recently developed ‘Consensus on
Exercise Reporting Template’ (CERT) which has a maximum obtainable score of
19.ResultsOf 1489 unique records identified from the search, 73 trials were included,
reporting 107 exercise interventions. Overall, the average CERT score was
10/19. The exercise equipment used, the use of supervision and a description
of whether the exercise prescription was tailored or generic were the most
frequently reported intervention components. The motivational strategies
used, intervention adherence and intervention fidelity were the most
underreported CERT components. There was no trend indicating that CERT
scores were higher in more recent publications.ConclusionsWe have identified that important details about exercise interventions are
frequently missing from the published literature. These missing data hinder
replication of research findings and limit the translation of evidence into
clinical practice.