Fig. 5

Forest plot of intermediate to long-term effects on function. Because the scales used in Dejaco 2017 and Hallgren 2014 go in the opposite direction (i.e. higher is better) than the one used in the other study, the mean values were multiplied by − 1. As a rule of thumb, a standardised mean difference of 0.2 represents a small difference, 0.5 a moderate, and 0.8 a large difference. IV = inverse-variance