INTRODUCTION: Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) on hemodialysis (HD) have muscle weakness in addition to a high risk of falls, motor impairment and immobilization. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review with meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials regarding the effectiveness of resistance exercises on muscle strengthening and lower limb endurance in patients with CKD on HD. METHODOLOGY: The study was conducted in the PubMed, EMBASE, SciELO, LILACS and Cochrane databases, without linguistic restrictions or year of publication. RESULTS: Of the 824 studies found, only 6 were included for analysis. Studies were allocated to some concern or high risk of bias regarding the reporting of outcomes. The low quality of outcome evidence can mainly be observed due to the severe level of inconsistency owing to the high degree of heterogeneity. A significant reduction in heterogeneity was observed after the sensitivity analysis, demonstrating an improvement in the muscle strength of the lower limbs (p = 0.002). CONCLUSION: It is concluded that most studies demonstrate benefits in carrying out resistance training programs in increasing muscle strength of the lower limbs, however, it is necessary that randomized clinical trials (RCTs) with greater methodological rigor are performed to confirm these findings.

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