Common mistakes in reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Ref ID 225
First Author M. Shamsi
Journal HEALTH PROMOTION PERSPECTIVES
Year Of Publishing 2020
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146040/pdf/hpp-10-97.pdf
Keywords • Oncology
• Risk of bias
• Searching
Problem(s) • Errors or omissions in search strategy
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
Article Type Editorial
Article Subtype Comment/letter
First Author Country Iran
Aim A letter to the editor highlighting some flaws in the conduct of one systematic review of the incidence of prostate cancer published in 2019.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings The authors highlight a number of errors in the conduct of one systematic review of the incidence of prostate cancer published in 2019 including: inappropriate use of Google Scholar as a search database; search using "prevalence" keywords which is different to "incidence"; typo error in number of studies included; results interpreted without incorporating quality assessment; and the authors assert that the tests for publication bias in assessment of "incidence" data conducted in this review are unnecessary as these are not studies of treatment effects.
Number of systematic reviews included 1
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description