Prostate Artery Embolisation: Poor Design and Reporting Impact the Value of Current Systematic Reviews

Ref ID 219
First Author T. D. Vreugdenburg
Journal EUROPEAN UROLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2018
URL https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29273408/
Keywords • Publication bias
• Expertise
• Grey literature
• Protocols
• Searching
• Risk of bias
• Surgery
• Single reviewer
• Low methodological quality
• Transparency
• Disclosure
Problem(s) • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Poor consideration of publication bias
• No registered or published protocol
• Insufficient literature searches
• Grey literature excluded
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Single reviewer / lack of double checking
• Lack of statistical expertise in handling of quantitative data
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Australia
Checklists • PRISMA 2009
• AMSTAR 1
Aim A research letter to highlight the methodological quality (AMSTAR) and reporting quality (PRISMA) of systematic reviews of prostate artery embolization published up to December 2016.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From the 9 included systematic reviews of prostate artery embolization, the median AMSTAR score was 4 out of 11 (range 0–7). None of the reviews included were prospectively registered on PROSPERO. The most common methodological concerns were related to comprehensive searches (33.3%), inclusion of grey literature (0.0%), and evaluation of publication bias (0.0%).
Number of systematic reviews included 9
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 536
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description