Poor reporting and inadequate searches were apparent in systematic reviews of adverse effects

Ref ID 375
First Author S. Golder
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2008
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(07)00217-X/fulltext
Keywords Harms
Reproducibility
General medical
Searching
Problem(s) Insufficient literature searches
Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data
Methods not described to enable replication
Number of systematic reviews included 277
Summary of Findings Less than 5% of the included systematic reviews of adverse effects reported enough detail for the searches to be reproducible. The majority of reviews did not indicate whether they used any language restrictions. Many of the reported literature searches relied solely on indexing or text-word searches, with little use of synonyms and truncation. Few reviews (14%) attempted to source information from pharmaceutical companies. The majority of reviews did not search more than one or two databases, and few other methods of identifying information were used.
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