An evaluation of epidemiological and reporting characteristics of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) systematic reviews (SRs)

Ref ID 574
First Author L. Turner
Journal PLOS ONE
Year Of Publishing 2013
URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0053536
Keywords • Cochrane
• Low methodological quality
• Low reporting quality
• Protocols
• Disclosure
• Risk of bias
• Complementary & Alternative
Problem(s) • Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
• No registered or published protocol
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Low reporting or methodological quality (OTHER GUIDANCE)
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Canada
Aim To compare epidemiological, descriptive and reporting characteristics of CAM-related systematic reviews to a control sample of conventional non-CAM reviews. CAM-related non-Cochrane reviews were also compared to conventional non-Cochrane reviews
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Less than 5% of all reviews reported public availability of a review protocol. Reporting methods of quality assessment was low across both systematic review fields. Source of funding was frequently and consistently underreported.
Number of systematic reviews included 349
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1926