Nature and reporting characteristics of UK health technology assessment systematic reviews

Ref ID 423
First Author C. Carroll
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2018
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5941703/pdf/12874_2018_Article_498.pdf
Keywords • Cochrane
• General medical
• Publication bias
• Non-Cochrane reviews
Problem(s) • Cochrane reviews more rigorous/higher quality than non-Cochrane reviews
• Poor consideration of publication bias
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess how well reporting standards of systematic reviews produced in a Health Technology Assessment context compare with reporting in Cochrane and other ‘non-Cochrane’ systematic reviews from the same years (2004 and 2014), as reported by Page et al. (PLoS Med. 016;13(5):e1002028).
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings The standard of reporting is often comparable between UK Health Technology Assessment systematic reviews and Cochrane reviews, and the reporting in both is more complete than other non-Cochrane systematic reviews. However, publication bias is almost never taken into account in Health Technology Assessment systematic reviews.
Number of systematic reviews included 330
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 462
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description