Fig. 1

The question of exercise and guidelines. a Proportion of pALS that ask their healthcare professional about exercise. Categories of response: Rarely 0 - 20%, Sometimes 21–60%, Routinely 61–100%. 54% of physicians and 64% of HP_Yes indicated that patients routinely ask about exercise. However patients rarely ask HP_No about exercise (73%); a significant difference in distribution of proportions (χ² = 31.48, p<.0005). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons using the z-test, with Bonferroni correction, showed no statistical differences between physicians and HP_Yes, but significant differences with HP_No in two categories: Rarely & Routinely. b Cumulative percent of responses when asked about familiarity with the ACSM exercise guidelines for pALS. Higher number indicate more familiarity: e.g. 1–2 indicate no to little familiarity, 6–7 moderate to strong familiarity. Therefore a shift of the curve rightward indicates greater familiarity. A Kruskal-Wallis H test revealed significant differences in medians (H(2) = 14.908, p=.001) which are indicated by arrow heads. Pairwise comparisons were performed using Dunn’s procedure with a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisions. This analysis revealed statistically significant differences in median familiarity scores between HP_No (1.0) and Physician (2.5) p=.005, and HP_No and HP_Yes (4.0) p<.0005, but not between Physician and HP_Yes groups