| 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 |
• Low methodological quality • Emergency medicine • Disclosure |
| 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 |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | South Africa |
| Checklists |
• AMSTAR 2 |
| Aim | To assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews published in African emergency medicine journals and indexed across PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases between January 2012 and December 2021 in English or French. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | This study included 34 African and a random sample of 100 international systematic reviews (SRs) published in African emergency medicine journals and indexed across PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases between January 2012 and December 2021 in English or French. 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%). |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 134 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 5071 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |