Effectiveness of an educational approach between adolescents and adults with patellofemoral pain syndrome: a scoping review with meta-analysis.

Only two of the four included trials could be pooled, so the pooled result rests on very little data. The pooled analysis compared education alone with education plus exercise. It does not answer the question the review set out to ask, whether education works better for adolescents than for adults, because the two populations were never compared directly. The two pooled trials contradicted each other, with 97% heterogeneity, and the authors rated the certainty of the evidence very low. Three of the four included trials were judged to be at high risk of bias, and only two of the four reported analysing participants in the groups they were allocated to. The review set no criteria for how severe the knee pain had to be, and the authors say the effect of education may depend on severity. The search strategy did not use controlled vocabulary terms, so relevant trials may have been missed. Education was delivered differently across the trials: individually face to face, in small groups of 7 to 8 patients, and with parents present in the adolescent trial. One trial's groups also received taping alongside exercise, so the contribution of any single treatment cannot be separated.

The authors state that the research received no external funding and that they declare no conflict of interest.

Do not read this as showing that education is as good as exercise for patellofemoral pain, or that education is useless. The pooled comparison was education alone against education plus exercise and it found no significant difference. No included trial compared education with a group that received no education at all, and the authors graded the evidence very low.