The meta-regression analysis with follow-up time as a moderating variable showed a trend suggesting that longer follow-up may be associated with a smaller clinical effect ( β = −0.0356; SE = 0.0199; p = 0.073), with 15.3% of the heterogeneity explained by this variable.
The difference between these classes did not reach statistical significance ( p = 0.416), but a trend favoring physiological pacing was noted.
In the head-to-head analysis, which included nine study arms from publications comparing more than one pacing technique, the adjusted overall effect was SMD = −0.10 (95%CI: −0.20 to +0.01; p = 0.063), which was borderline non-significant.