Adequacy of risk of bias assessment in surgical vs non-surgical trials in Cochrane reviews: a methodological study

Ref ID 790
First Author O. Barcot
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2020
URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12874-020-01123-7
Keywords Cochrane
Surgery
Author
Risk of bias
Problem(s) Flawed risk of bias undertaken
Weaknesses identified in some Cochrane reviews
Number of systematic reviews included 729
Summary of Findings From 729 included Cochrane reviews published between July 2015 and June 2016 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The prevalence of adequate risk of bias judgments for all analysed risk of bias domains was generally higher in surgical trials than in non-surgical trials. For two risk of bias domains assessing blinding, this difference between surgical and non-surgical trials was statistically significant (P < 0.001), for allocation concealment test power, was too low (P = 0.039, beta < 0.8), while the difference between two types of trials was not significant for risk of bias domain regarding randomization (P = 0.124).
Did the article find that the problem(s) led to qualitative changes in interpretation of the results? Not Applicable
Are the methods of the article described in enough detail to replicate the study? Yes