| Ref ID | 162 |
| First Author | A. Synnot |
| Journal | PLOS ONE [ELECTRONIC RESOURCE] |
| Year Of Publishing | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013193/pdf/pone.0198676.pdf |
| Keywords |
• Grey literature • Protocols • Error • Publication bias • Searching • Risk of bias • Neurology • Currency • Single reviewer |
| Problem(s) |
• No registered or published protocol • Grey literature excluded • Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria • Single reviewer / lack of double checking • Poor consideration of publication bias • No quality assessment undertaken or reported • Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing • Errors in study inclusion or omission of relevant studies • Outdated searches |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | Australia |
| Checklists |
• AMSTAR 1 |
| Aim | To assess the currency, completeness and quality of evidence from systematic reviews of acute management of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury published across several databases up to March 2016. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | Approximately half of the systematic reviews lacked currency, in that they did not include most recently published eligible randomised controlled trial (45%). One-third of reviews were incomplete, meaning they appeared to miss one or more eligible randomised controlled trial (35%). Approximately one-quarter of the RCTs in the acute management of moderate to severe traumatic brain injury are not included in any systematic review, thus limiting their ability to impact upon practice. Between half to one-third of systematic reviews reported using two independent reviewers (n = 53, 62.4%) or including unpublished studies (n = 45, 52.9%). Similar numbers of systematic reviews were found to have used their quality assessment ratings to interpret review findings (n = 58, 68.2%), or to have explicitly considered publication bias (n = 41, 48.2%).Only one-third of systematic review authors reported a study protocol (n = 29, 34.1%) and provided a full account of included and excluded studies (n = 30, 35.3%). No systematic review included both review-level and included study-level conflict of interest/funding information. |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 85 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 1165 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |