Table 4.

Safety of exercise therapy

First author, publication year [reference]	Adverse events	Dropouts/protocol violations
Hand exercises
Piga, 2014 [44]	None reported	E: one patient discontinued the exercise protocol because of major abdominal surgery and was withdrawn from the trial C: two patients reported discontinuing the protocol for >1 week for no specific reason and were withdrawn from the study
Landim, 2017 [41]	None reported	Five patients did not return for re-evaluations and were excluded. In the flow diagram, transportation problems are given as the reason
Orofacial exercises
Yuen, 2011 [13]	Not determinable	E: four participants dropped out. Some of the known reasons for participant dropout included sickness, diagnosis of cancer, incarceration, and complaint of sore throat after dental cleaning C: five participants dropped out. Some of the known reasons for this included hip replacement, military service, and unable to re-schedule the final visit before termination of the study
Pizzo, 2003 [11]	Mid-muscular fatigue at the cheek and the temporomandibular joint was reported in 10/10 and 4/10 subjects, respectively. This occurred during the exercise programme and disappeared within 30 min after finishing the exercises	No dropouts
Aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises
Mitropoulos, 2018 [42]	None reported	One dropout for each exercise group. Reasons are not specified
Mitropoulos, 2019 [43]	None reported	No dropouts
Oliveira, 2009 [23]	None reported	Nine patients agreed to participate and seven completed the study. Reasons are not given
Pinto, 2011 [12]	None reported	No dropouts
Alexanderson, 2014 [27]	None reported	One participant missed two of in total 24 exercise sessions owing to medical investigations of increased lung symptoms

C: control group; E: experimental group.