Some improvements are apparent in identifying adverse effects in systematic reviews from 1994 to 2011

Ref ID 376
First Author S. Golder
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2013
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(12)00309-5/pdf
Keywords • Harms
• Cochrane
• Reproducibility
Problem(s) • Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data
• Methods not described to enable replication
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess whether any improvements in the reporting and quality of searching in systematic reviews of adverse effects in the Cochrane database and the Database of abstract of reviews of effects between 1994 and 2011.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings 5% of reviews in the Cochrane database and the Database of abstract of reviews of effects between 1994 and 2011 focused on adverse effects. Whilst some improvements in literature searches were apparent, such as an increase in the number of databases searched and fewer date and language restrictions applied there was an increase in reviews limited to data from randomized controlled trials. The reporting of search strategies could still be improved further, with only 9% of the included reviews reporting reproducible searches.
Number of systematic reviews included 849
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 15718
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description