Systematic review adherence to methodological or reporting quality

Ref ID 499
First Author K. Pussegoda
Journal SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
Year Of Publishing 2017
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5516390/pdf/13643_2017_Article_527.pdf
Keywords • General medical
• Protocols
• Grey literature
• External validity
• Publication bias
• Low reporting quality
• Searching
• Low methodological quality
• Single reviewer
• Risk of bias
• Overviews/Umbrella Reviews
• Disclosure
• Error
Problem(s) • No registered or published protocol
• Single reviewer / lack of double checking
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias
• Low reporting (PRISMA) quality
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Lack of guidance or consistency in systematic overview / umbrella / review of systematic reviews
• Risk of bias not incorporated into conclusions of review
• Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• Ignores setting or context of included studies which limits review applicability
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria
• Grey literature excluded
• Search strategy not provided
• Insufficient literature searches
• Poor consideration of publication bias
• Errors in effect estimate calculations or data synthesis
• Individual study characteristics not reported sufficiently
Number of systematic reviews included 5371
Summary of Findings Many deficits of methodological and reporting quality were identified of which a few are listed here. Of the reviews using PRISMA, less than 6% provided protocol information and only 30% reported the risk of bias assessment across studies. For reports using QUOROM, only 9% of reviews provided a trial flow diagram and only 46% of reviews described the selection criteria and described the characteristics of included studies. Of reports using AMSTAR, 30% used duplicate study selection and data extraction and only 39% stated conflicts of interest. For reviews using OQAQ, 37% of the reviews assessed risk of bias (validity) in the included studies.
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