The fate of urological systematic reviews registered in PROSPERO

Ref ID 34
First Author S. Khaleel
Journal WORLD JOURNAL OF UROLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2019
URL https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00345-019-03032-x.pdf
Keywords Protocols
Multiplicity
Open data
Heterogeneity
Urology
Single reviewer
Problem(s) Undocumented or unjustified deviations to the review protocol
Multiplicity of outcomes and lack of pre-specification for outcome reporting
Inadequate analysis of heterogeneity
Unplanned or unjustified subgroup or sensitivity analyses
Single reviewer / lack of double checking
Unpublished or "zombie" reviews (the file-drawer effect)
Number of systematic reviews included 576
Summary of Findings Of the 576 registered urologic systematic reviews, 225 (39.1%) had corresponding full-text publications. Of these, only 40 (17.7%) had updated their PROSPERO entry to indicate review publication. Little over half of published reviews (52.7%) explicitly stated primary outcome(s) that matched the primary outcome of their corresponding PROSPERO protocol. 25.9% failed to define any primary endpoint(s). A majority (82.4%) of protocol authors indicated the intent of performing the literature screening process in duplicate; of these, 91.8% actually did so in the full-text publication. Roughly half (53.2%) of reviews planned to evaluate heterogeneity based on their protocol. Of these, only 57.0% assessed heterogeneity in their final product. Only a third (34.3%) of the protocols had specified whether they intended to perform a subgroup analysis, and less than half of these protocols (45.2%) were concordant with their planned protocol in this regard.
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? No