Stair walking is associated with returning home after inpatient stroke rehabilitation in Belgium and Switzerland: a multicentric retrospective study.

Only patients with complete records were used, so the final model rests on 648 of the 1475 patients, 43.9% of them. Those patients may differ from the ones excluded, and the missing data was large enough that the authors say it may introduce selection bias. The data came from routine records rather than a standardised assessment schedule, and the three centres used different measures, so independence had to be grouped into broad levels and many variables were too incomplete to use at all. Admission data were less complete than discharge data, and the model was not adjusted for differences between centres, so some of the variation between the Belgian and Swiss results may reflect the centres rather than the patients. Data collection for 2020 and 2021 ran through the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected stroke presentation rates and access to rehabilitation. The design is retrospective and observational, so it describes which patients went home, not what causes a patient to go home or what would change the outcome if you did it.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship or publication of the article, and the research received no specific grant from any public, commercial or not-for-profit funding body.

Do not read this as proof that training stair walking gets patients home. It is a retrospective look at records, so it shows that patients who could manage stairs were more likely to be discharged home, not that improving stair ability causes that to happen. Only 648 of the 1475 patients had complete data for the model, so the size of the association may shift in other groups.