Methodological quality of systematic reviews in dentistry including animal studies: a cross-sectional study

Ref ID	1043
First Author	M.C. Menne
Journal	IRISH VETERINARY JOURNAL
Year Of Publishing	2023
URL	https://irishvetjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13620-023-00261-w
Keywords	• Dentistry • Animal studies • Low methodological quality
Problem(s)	• Single reviewer / lack of double checking • Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria • Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided • Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed • Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
Number of systematic reviews included	190
Summary of Findings	From 190 included systematic reviews indexed across Pubmed, Scopus and Web of Science up to July 2022, of research using laboratory animals as models. Using AMSTAR 2 to assess the included systematic reviews, 133 (70.0%) were deemed critically low. The items of particular concern were: 1) lack of explanation of the selection of study designs for inclusion in the review (71.5%), 2) review authors not performing data extraction in duplicate (64.7%), 3) review authors not providing a list of excluded studies with justifications (64.2%), 4) no report on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review (98.9%), and 5) no account for the risk of bias in individual studies when interpreting/ discussing the results. Multivariable linear regression analysis showed that the adherence scores of AMSTAR-2 was significantly positively associated with publication year, journal impact factor (IF), topic, and the use of tools to assess risk of bias (RoB) of the systematic reviews.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results?	N/A
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study?