Contradictory Findings of Two Recent Meta-Analyses: What Are We Supposed to Believe About Anesthetic Technique in Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery?

Ref ID 789
First Author P.S. Pagel
Journal JOURNAL OF CARDIOTHORACIC & VASCULAR ANESTHESIA
Year Of Publishing 2021
URL https://www.jcvaonline.com/article/S1053-0770(21)00352-9/fulltext
Keywords • Team
• Surgery
• Cardiology
• Non-Cochrane reviews
• Inference
Problem(s) • Following guidelines is no guarantee of a rigorous systematic review
• Redundant / overlapping / duplicated review question; leads to research waste
• Errors in study inclusion or omission of relevant studies
• Inflexible methods to complex questions
Article Type Editorial
Article Subtype Comment/letter
First Author Country United States
Aim A letter to the editor highlighting the discrepant findings of two conflicting systematic reviews published in 2020 and 2021 on volatile anaesthesia with total intravenous anaesthesia on outcomes after cardiac surgery, including coronary artery bypass grafting.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings The letter to the editor highlights the discrepant findings of two conflicting systematic reviews published in 2020 and 2021 on volatile anaesthesia with total intravenous anaesthesia on outcomes after cardiac surgery, including coronary artery bypass grafting. The authors consider that the exclusion of OP-CAB patients by one of the reviews was inappropriate and introduced bias into the meta-analysis.
Number of systematic reviews included 2
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 2