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
Number of systematic reviews included 190
Summary of Findings 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. The systematic reviews that were published later, published in a journal with higher impact factor, focused on non-surgery topics and used at least one tool had significantly higher adherence scores.
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?