Challenges in systematic reviews that assess treatment harms

Ref ID 156
First Author R. Chou
Journal ANNALS OF INTERNAL MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing 2005
URL https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/0003-4819-142-12_Part_2-200506211-00009
Keywords • Harms
Problem(s) • Inclusion of observational / non-randomised studies
• Selective reporting of harms / safety / adverse events / side effects
• Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data
Article Type Non-systematic literature review
First Author Country United States
Aim To assess the reporting of harms in systematic reviews produced by the US Evidence-based Practice Center reports published between December 1998 and April 2004.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Of 96 Evidence-based Practice Center evidence reports published between December 1998 and April 2004, 71 addressed health care interventions associated with potential harms. Of these, 11 did not assess harms. Two of the 11 evaluated surgical interventions, and the other 9 evaluated pharmacologic interventions or approaches to diagnostic testing and disease management. Of the 60 remaining EPC reports, 34 included observational studies of adverse events. Quality of observational studies is difficult to uniformly assess due to differences in study design for harms data and data from these studies is often inappropriately combined.
Number of systematic reviews included 96
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 96
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description