Quality of systematic reviews in African emergency medicine: a cross-sectional methodological study

Ref ID	1070
First Author	J. van Niekerk
Journal	AFRICAN JOURNAL OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing	2023
URL	https://www-sciencedirect-com.sheffield.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S2211419X2300054X?via%3Dihub
Keywords	Emergency medicine Low methodological quality
Problem(s)	No registered or published protocol Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria Literature searches not validated by information specialist
Number of systematic reviews included	134
Summary of Findings	This study included 34 African and a random sample of 100 international systematic reviews (SRs). Methodological quality was low or critically low for all the African SRs (n=34, 100%) and all but three international SRs (n=97, 97%). Very few reviews in the African journal subgroup included an author with methodological expertise (n=1, 3%) or had librarian assistance (n=3, 9%), or referenced a scoping review (n=0, 0%). The GRADE approach was used infrequently in both the African (n=2, 6%) and international (n=24, 24%) journal groups. More than two-thirds (n=24, 71%) of African systematic reviews did not identify themselves as such in the title. The AMSTAR 2 assessments showed that the most common weaknesses across both African and international systematic reviews were 1) not establishing a priori review protocols (n= 84, 62.6%, 2) unclear selection of study designs (n=130, 97.0%) 3) not providing a list of excluded studies (n=128, 95.5%) and 4) unclear reporting on funding sources for included studies (n=129, 96.2%).
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?