Effects of walking exercise on bowel preparation in patients undergoing colonoscopy: evidence from systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Abstract Objective This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the effects of walking exercise on bowel preparation in patients undergoing colonoscopy. Methods PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE, Ovid, The Cochrane Library, Wanfang Data, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database, and Chinese BioMedical Database were searched from their inception to January 2019. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and controlled clinical trials (CCTs) examining the effects of walking exercise in patients undergoing colonoscopy were considered for inclusion. After screening literature, extracting data and evaluating methodological quality, RevMan 5.3 software was used for meta-analysis. Results Five studies (four RCTs and one CCTs) involved 984 participants were included. The results of meta-analysis demonstrated that the walking exercise group showed significantly higher improvements in the rate of adequate bowel preparation than the control group (risk ratio [RR] = 1.28, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.03–1.58], P < 0.05). In addition, the walking exercise group had lower incidence of vomiting (RR = 0.39, 95% CI [0.23–0.68], P < 0.01) and abdominal pain (RR = 0.51, 95% CI [0.29–0.90], P < 0.05) with lower heterogeneity. Conclusions This systematic review and meta-analysis provided specific evidence that walking exercise during bowel preparation can improve the rate of adequate bowel preparation and reduce the incidence of vomiting and abdominal pain in patients undergoing colonoscopy. Since the conclusion of this meta-analysis was drawn based on the limited number of high-quality RCTs, more rigorous RCTs should be conducted in the future.