What's in a name? The challenge of describing interventions in systematic reviews: analysis of a random sample of reviews of non-pharmacological stroke interventions

Ref ID 136
First Author T. C. Hoffmann
Journal BMJ OPEN
Year Of Publishing 2015
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654305/pdf/bmjopen-2015-009051.pdf
Keywords • Missing data
• Cochrane
• Non-Cochrane reviews
• Cardiology
• Physiotherapy
• Author
• Complementary & Alternative
Problem(s) • Intervention not described / defined
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Australia
Aim To assess systematic reviews of non-pharmacological interventions, for completeness of intervention reporting, the most frequently missing elements, and review authors’ use of and beliefs about providing intervention information.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings 30 Cochrane and 30 non-Cochrane systematic reviews were included comprising 568 eligible trials and 589 eligible interventions. Most reviews were missing information for the majority of items. The most incompletely described items were: modifications, intervention fidelity, materials, procedure and tailoring (missing from all interventions in 97%, 90%, 88%, 83% and 83% of reviews, respectively). 46 corresponding authors of the 58 reviews with eligible interventions were contacted. Of the 33 (71%) authors who responded, 19 (58%) reported that they had further information about the intervention that was not included in the review, while 23 (70%) indicated that they had tried to obtain further information about the intervention as part of the review, using various methods, with variable success.
Number of systematic reviews included 60
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 60
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description