Interventions for treating pain and disability in adults with complex regional pain syndrome- an overview of systematic reviews

Ref ID 1012
First Author M.C. Ferraro
Journal COCHRANE DATABASE OF SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10259367/
Keywords • Cochrane
• Pain
• Non-Cochrane reviews
Problem(s) • No registered or published protocol
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Cochrane reviews more rigorous/higher quality than non-Cochrane reviews
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Perpetuates citation of poor quality primary study data
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Australia
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To summarise the evidence from Cochrane and non‐Cochrane systematic reviews of the efficacy, effectiveness, and safety of any intervention used to reduce pain, disability, or both, in adults with complex regional pain syndrome.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 17 included systematic reviews identified from Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CINAHL, PEDro, LILACS and Epistemonikos from inception to October 2022. AMSTAR 2 ratings for the 17 included reviews showed that four Cochrane reviews were judged as high quality. One Cochrane review was judged as low quality because it did not account for risk of bias in primary studies when interpreting the results of the review, and because of several other non‐critical weaknesses. Two non‐Cochrane reviews were judged as low quality, either because it was not stated that review methods were established prior to conducting the review or because review authors did not provide a list of excluded studies and justify the exclusions, in addition to other non‐critical weaknesses. The remaining ten non‐Cochrane reviews were all judged as having critically low quality, due to multiple critical and non‐critical weaknesses.
Number of systematic reviews included 17
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 3531
Treatment impacted Not Applicable
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description