Does exercise improve healing of diabetic foot ulcers? A systematic review.

Background: For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, offloading is one crucial aspect of treatment and aims to redistribute pressure away from the ulcer site. In addition to offloading strategies, patients are often advised to reduce their activity levels. Consequently, patients may avoid exercise altogether.

Delirium management: Let's get physical? A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: To investigate whether physical training (alone or in a multi-component intervention) is effective in preventing delirium or improving outcomes for adult patients with delirium in the hospital setting.

Methods: A systematic review, qualitative synthesis and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials identified by searches of electronic databases, combining key concepts of delirium and physical training (the target intervention). Outcomes were incidence of delirium (for prevention trials) and delirium duration, delirium severity and hospital outcomes (for management trials).

Relationship between frailty and discharge outcomes in subacute care.

Aims: To determine whether level of frailty can predict length of stay, discharge destination, level of participation in physiotherapy, and degree of physical improvement with physiotherapy in older, subacute hospital patients.

Method: The Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) was administered to 75 older people in a subacute hospital setting. Relationships between EFS score and a range of other measures, including participation in physiotherapy, Elderly Mobility Scale, discharge destination and length of stay, were examined.