Epidemiology, quality and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews of traditional Chinese medicine interventions published in Chinese journals

Ref ID 570
First Author B. Ma
Journal PLOS ONE
Year Of Publishing 2011
URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102106/
Keywords • Low reporting quality
• Publication bias
• Protocols
• Searching
• Low methodological quality
• Single reviewer
• Disclosure
• Risk of bias
• Pre-specification
• Complementary & Alternative
Problem(s) • Poor consideration of publication bias
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Low reporting (PRISMA) quality
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Single reviewer / lack of double checking
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
• Grey literature excluded
• No registered or published protocol
• Insufficient literature searches
• Lack of prespecification in eligibility criteria
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country China
Checklists • PRISMA 2009
• AMSTAR 1
Aim To assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews of acupuncture published in Chinese journals between 1978 to 2010 using AMSTAR.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Low quality was demonstrated across a number of AMSTAR criteria.
Number of systematic reviews included 369
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 380
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description