The role of pulmonary rehabilitation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: An overview of systematic reviews

Ref ID 1062
First Author S. Song
Journal PLOS ONE
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295367
Keywords Risk of bias
Pulmonology
Low methodological quality
Problem(s) Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
High risk of bias (ROBIS)
No registered or published protocol
Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria
Meta-analyses and forest plots presented without considering risk of bias / quality
Number of systematic reviews included 7
Summary of Findings Seven systematic reviews from 2018–2023 were included. ROBIS and AMSTAR-2 assessments showed that 42.86% of the SRs had a high risk of bias and 85.71% of the SRs had critically low methodological quality. Methodological limitations arose from the following critical items: only 2 (28.5%) studies reported their study protocols, no studies stated whether the risk of bias in the included studies was considered in the outcome, and only 1 (14.2%) study assessed publication bias and discussed the impact of bias. For the non-critical items, none of the studies explained the type of included studies, reported the source of funding for the included studies, or assessed the impact of the risk of bias of the included studies on the meta-analysis. The ROBIS assessments showed that the main threats to bias arose from Domain 4 (funding and synthesis) where 1 review (14.2%) was rated as a low risk of bias, and the remaining 6 (85.7%) were all rated as high risk of bias.
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?