Paper – Systematic Reviewlution

Keywords	• Abstract / summary • Cochrane • General medical
Problem(s)	• Unwieldy/ difficult to read
Article Type	Empirical
Article Subtype	Survey/questionnaire of authors opinions/practices
First Author Country	Malaysia
Aim	To assess how well a group of Malaysian hospital practitioners and medical students derived their own conclusions from systematic reviews. Four Cochrane review abstracts were presented without the conclusions. For each article, the participants chose a conclusion from among six options comprising different combinations of the direction of effect and the strength of the evidence.
Level of Investigation	Descriptive
Summary of Findings	The majority of participants could not generate appropriate conclusions from systematic reviews in the absence of guidance provided by the authors’ conclusions. 60.3% correctly identified the direction of effect, and 30.1% chose the best conclusions, having identified both the direction of effect and the strength of evidence.
Number of systematic reviews included	4
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed	30
Treatment impacted	No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted	Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description

Does the article have a publicly available protocol?	No
Did the review team include both methodological and clinical experts?	Not Applicable
Sampling strategy for obtaining the systematic reviews under assessment	Pre Selected
Was the sample size of systematic reviews subject to any formal sample size or power calculation?	No
Were any or all of the study selection and data extraction performed in duplicate?	Yes
Were any statistical adjustments made to correct for confounding?	Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study?	Yes