Methodological quality and reporting of systematic reviews in hand and wrist pathology

Ref ID	49
First Author	J. Wasiak
Journal	JOURNAL OF HAND SURGERY (EUROPEAN VOLUME)
Year Of Publishing	2017
URL	https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1753193417712660
Keywords	• Surgery • Transparency • Grey literature • Publication bias • Low reporting quality • Searching • Risk of bias
Problem(s)	• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality • Poor consideration of publication bias • Insufficient literature searches • No registered or published protocol • Grey literature excluded • No quality assessment undertaken or reported
Number of systematic reviews included	91
Summary of Findings	For the 91 included systematic reviews in hand and wrist pathology published from 1997 to November 2016 the median PRISMA score was 15 out of 27 and median AMSTAR score was 4 out of 11. Areas of deficiency included presence of a review protocol (14%), assessment of risk of bias (methods) across studies (17%) and assessment of risk of bias (publications) across studies (18%); inclusion of conflict of interest or funding of included studies (1.1%), searching unpublished studies using the ‘grey’ literature (13%) and the use of ‘a priori’ design or reference to a protocol (15%).
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results?	N/A
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study?	Yes