Figure 5.

Forest plots assessing the need for invasive (A–C) and non-invasive (D,E) mechanical ventilation in CP intervention and standard treatment. (A) Concerning the need of invasive mechanical ventilation both groups showed no difference although a tendency favoring the CP treatment can be observed. The results also indicate moderate heterogeneity levels; therefore we conducted a sub-analysis. (B) Sub-analysis by disease severity (miscellaneous of critical and severe patients, and moderately ill patients). (C) Sub-analysis by study design (RCT vs. CNRT). (D) The analysis regarding the need of non-invasive mechanical ventilation showed that both groups presented no significant difference, although patients in the CP group had lower necessity of supplemental oxygen. The heterogeneity levels were null, thus a sensibility analysis by disease severity was performed (E). Different sizes of data markers correspond to the relative weight assigned in the pooled analysis. Diamond marker indicates the overall result.