Methodological quality of systematic reviews on sepsis treatments: A cross-sectional study

Ref ID	1022
First Author	L. Ho
Journal	AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing	2024
URL	https://www-sciencedirect-com.sheffield.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0735675723006769?via%3Dihub
Keywords	General medical Low methodological quality
Problem(s)	No registered or published protocol Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria Meta-analyses and forest plots presented without considering risk of bias / quality
Number of systematic reviews included	102
Summary of Findings	The journal impact factors of the SRs ranged from 0 to 47.8, with a median of 2.63. The number of review authors ranged from 2 to 17 (median of 6); 62 (60.8%) SRs did not report their funding location or the presence of funding. Among the 102 SRs evaluated using AMSTAR 2, only two (2.0%) were judged to have high overall methodological quality, 4 (3.9%) were of moderate quality, and 7 (6.9%) were of low quality. Most (n = 89; 87.3%) had critically low quality. The items that were least well met were: 1) 44 (43.1) did not report the availability of a protocol; 2) 86 (84.3%) did not explain their selection of the study designs for inclusion in the review; 3) 80 (78.4%) did not provide a list of excluded studies with reasons; 4) 96 (94.1%) did not report on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review; 4) 72 (70.6%) did not assess the potential impact of RoB in individual studies on the results of the meta-analysis or other evidence synthesis.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results?	Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study?