| Ref ID | 1060 |
| First Author | W. Siemens |
| Journal | JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY |
| Year Of Publishing | 2024 |
| URL | https://www-sciencedirect-com.sheffield.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0895435623003268?via%3Dihub |
| Keywords |
• Certainty • COVID |
| Problem(s) |
• Inconclusive or lack of recommendations • Interpreted without considering certainty or overall quality of the evidence base |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | Germany |
| Checklists |
• GRADE |
| Aim | 1) To evaluate how many systematic reviews (SRs) on COVID-19 treatments contained an implications for research (IfR) statement. 2) For those systematic reviews that contained an IfR statement, to examine whether the IfR statements considered PICO elements, concepts underlying GRADE domains, or additional IfR elements. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | Of the 326 included SRs, of which 284 SRs (87.1%) stated IfR. Of these 284 SRs, 201 (70.8%) reported using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses and 66 (23.2%) using GRADE. IfR statements (n = 284) addressing PICO were unstructured and commonly reported ‘population’ (n = 195, 68.7%), ‘intervention’ (n = 242, 85.2%), and ‘outcome’ (n = 127, 44.7%) but not ‘control’ (n = 29, 10.2%). Concepts underlying GRADE domains were infrequently reported in IfR statements of SRs (n = 284): ‘risk of bias’ (n = 14, 4.9%), ‘imprecision’ (n = 8, 2.8%), ‘inconsistency’ (n = 7, 2.5%), ‘publication bias’ (n = 3, 1.1%), and ‘indirectness’ (n = 1, 0.4%). |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 326 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 2154 |
| Treatment impacted | Not Applicable |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |