The reporting quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in vascular surgery needs improvement: a systematic review

Ref ID 212
First Author W. K. Tan
Journal INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SURGERY
Year Of Publishing 2014
URL https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25448643/
Keywords • Risk of bias
• Low reporting quality
• Reproducibility
• Surgery
Problem(s) • Low reporting (PRISMA) quality
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• Methods not described to enable replication
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United Kingdom
Checklists • PRISMA 2009
Aim To assess the reporting quality (PRISMA) of systematic reviews published in 2008 and 2012 in high impact journals for the field of vascular surgery.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings The average percentage of PRISMA items reported in the 74 included systematic reviews of general and vascular surgical journals in 2012 was 73%, compared to 65% in 2008, indicating some improvement in the quality of reporting (p < 0.01). However some areas of reporting remained deficient in 2012 including: protocol and registration (3%); describing results of subgroup analyses (35%); assessing risk of bias across studies (38%); describing methods of data extraction (57%), describing methods of synthesising results (65%); funding of systematic review (59%).
Number of systematic reviews included 74
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 74
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description