| Ref ID | 398 |
| First Author | B. Pham |
| Journal | JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY |
| Year Of Publishing | 2005 |
| URL | https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(05)00059-4/fulltext |
| Keywords |
• Complementary & Alternative |
| Problem(s) |
• Language restriction |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Small analytical study |
| First Author Country | Canada |
| Aim | To assess the extent to which including trials reported in languages other than English influences the results of systematic reviews for both conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine interventions. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | For conventional medicine interventions, language-restricted systematic reviews, compared with language-inclusive ones, did not introduce biased results, in terms of estimates of intervention effectiveness. For complimentary and alternative medicines interventions, however, language-restricted systematic reviews resulted in a 63% smaller protective effect estimate than language inclusive reviews |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 42 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 42 |
| Treatment impacted | Yes |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Yes |
| Interpretation impacted description | For complimentary and alternative medicine, inclusion of trials from languages other than English had a significant impact on the treatment effect. |