Intra-Articular Steroid Injection for Patients with Hip Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Table 3
GRADE evidence profile of pooled analysis.
Summary of findings
Quality assessment
No. of studies
No. of patients
Effect
Design
Limitations
Inconsistency
Indirectness
Imprecision
Quality
Steroid
Placebo
Hip pain
1-2 weeks (2)
51
55
SMD (95% CI): −1.58 [−3.42, 0.26]
RCTs
No serious limitations
No serious inconsistency$
No serious indirectness
Serious
Moderate
3–4 weeks (4)
122
116
SMD (95% CI): −1.93 [−3.34, −0.52]
RCTs
No serious limitations
No serious inconsistency$
No serious indirectness
No serious imprecision
High
8–12 weeks (5)
162
137
SMD (95% CI): −1.77 [−2.94, −0.61]
RCTs
Limitations#
No serious inconsistency$
No serious indirectness
No serious imprecision
Moderate
GRADE: Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation; SMD: standard mean difference; RCTs: randomized controlled trials. #One case-control trial was included that might raise the risk of bias. $Even substantial heterogeneities were found across the included trials, and a consistent trend favoring steroid of each trial was also identified. The 95% confidence interval of SMD containing the zero line might be accounted for downgrading.
