2.2. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The following inclusion criteria were applied: (I) IPF participants should be diagnosed according to previous or current guidelines for the American Thoracic Society (ATS)/European Respiratory Society (ERS). (II) The experimental and control groups should have same interventions, with the exception of PR programs in the experimental group. PR was defined as a comprehensive program composed at least one of exercise training, educational lectures, or self-administered. (III) The outcomes of interest were exercise capacity (measured by 6MWT/6MWD), lung function (measured by FVC% and DLCO% predicted), and quality of life (measured by SGRQ/IPF-specific SGRQ) as well as adverse events. (IV) RCTs evaluate the effects of PR on IPF patients. Exclusion criteria are as follows: (I) Not RCTs (retrospective, observational, cohort as well as case control studies). (II) Conference abstracts with no corresponding full article published in journal. (III) Duplicate publications. Data were only extracted from the study with the most up-to-date information. (IV) No outcomes of interest. (V) Study protocol.