Assessing harmful effects in systematic reviews

Ref ID 431
First Author H. M. McIntosh
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2004
URL https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-4-19
Keywords • Harms
• Risk of bias
Problem(s) • Review question not justified / important
• Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias
• Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Small analytical study
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess and compare the methods used in three systematic reviews related to examining harmful effects of interventions, conducted as Health Technology Assessments for the UK National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment and published between 2001 and 2003.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings All three reviews generated a large volume of work that did not yield much useful information for health care decision makers. The key areas for improvement we identified were focusing the review question, including appropriate study designs for obtaining safety data and developing methods for quality assessment of studies of harmful effects.
Number of systematic reviews included 3
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 3
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description