Response to "Chest physiotherapy for children with acute bronchiolitis: Do we need more evidence?"

To the editor:

It is with appreciation that our work[1] published by your journal, is having an impact on the physiotherapy community.

In an attempt to answer the questions raised by Combret et al.,[2] we will address the different paragraphs one by one.

Regarding the time lapse between the time when the study was done and the time when it was submitted for publication, as well as its registration in Clinical Trials a posteriori, it was due to the fact that the study was part of a PhD process started in 2008, which was interrupted in 2010 and restarted in 2016. Although the PhD process was interrupted, the study was performed and the data were saved and used when the PhD process was restarted once again. The registration in Clinical Trials was done posteriori because publications of randomized studies must have a registration. From what we were informed, registration before 2010 was not required.

The second point mentioned was that the physiotherapist who intervened in the experimental group was the same responsible for the study. This is due to the fact that it was not at all possible to recruit other physiotherapists to carry out the intervention and assessments. This situation is mentioned in the article as one of the negative points of the study.

Finally, it is also mentioned in the article that the results of the study have great limitations, namely not being able to generalize the results for the population in general. For this same reason we think that other studies should be carried out, with larger samples, larger number of physiotherapists and better design.

We hope to have clarified our physiotherapist colleagues and encouraged new works in this area.