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
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Australia
Checklists • PRISMA 2009
• AMSTAR 1
Aim To assess the reporting quality (PRISMA) and methodological quality (AMSTAR) of systematic reviews in hand and wrist pathology published from 1997 to November 2016.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
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(publications) across studies (18%); inclusion of conflict of interest or funding of included studies (1.1%), searching unpublished studies using the ‘grey’ literature (13%) and the use of ‘a priori’ design or reference to a protocol (15%).
Number of systematic reviews included 91
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 592
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description