Overall confidence in the results of systematic reviews on exercise therapy for chronic low back pain: a cross-sectional analysis using the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) 2 tool

Ref ID 275
First Author M. O. Almeida
Journal BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL THERAPY
Year Of Publishing 2020
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7082685/pdf/main.pdf
Keywords • Physiotherapy
• Pre-specification
• Risk of bias
• Publication bias
• Protocols
• Disclosure
Problem(s) • No registered or published protocol
• Poor consideration of publication bias
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Brazil
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To assess the methodological quality (AMSTAR 2) and overall confidence in the results of systematic reviews of exercise therapy for chronic non-specific low back pain published up to February 2017.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings 21% of 38 included systematic reviews had a protocol published or registered prospectively. The overall confidence in the results of 74% of included reviews was rated using AMSTAR 2 as ‘Critically low’; 16% as ‘Low’, 2% as Moderate, and 8% were rated as ‘High’. Reviews performed most poorly with respect to: explaining selection of the study designs (8%); reporting sources of funding for included studies (11%); assessing potential impact of risk of bias in individual studies on the results of the meta-analyses (13%); investigation of publication bias (21%); and establishing review methods prior to conduct of the review (21%).
Number of systematic reviews included 38
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 2913
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description