Systematic reviews with published protocols compared to those without: more effort, older search

Ref ID 348
First Author K. Allers
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2018
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(17)30170-1/fulltext
Keywords • Pre-specification
• General medical
• Currency
• Searching
• Protocols
Problem(s) • Outdated searches
• Untimely (taking too long) or resource intensive
• No registered or published protocol
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Germany
Aim To assess trends in published protocols of systematic reviews and to analyse how systematic reviews with published protocols differ from those without from 80 published systematic reviews with protocols and 80 published systematic reviews without protocols in 2012 and 2013.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Systematic reviews with protocols reported their methods more comprehensively than systematic reviews without protocols, but their median time from search to submission was longer (325 vs. 122 days; P < 0.001) meaning that the searches of systematic reviews with published protocols were about 200 days older compared with their controls. Almost two-thirds of the systematic reviews with protocols and about 10% of the controls could be found in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO).
Number of systematic reviews included 160
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1574
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description