Systematic reviews synthesized evidence without consistent quality assessment of primary studies examining epidemiology of chronic diseases

Ref ID 620
First Author T. Shamliyan
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2012
URL https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(11)00378-7/fulltext
Keywords • Risk of bias
• Observational studies
• Epidemiology
Problem(s) • Inclusion of observational / non-randomised studies
• No quality assessment undertaken or reported
• Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United States
Aim To evaluate how systematic reviews assess the quality of observational nontherapeutic studies published in English from 1966 through June 2008
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Planned quality assessment was reported in 37% of systematic reviews; just over half of the systematic reviews (number not reported) used the quality of primary studies in their evidence syntheses
Number of systematic reviews included 145
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1053
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description