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.