The life and death of living systematic reviews: a methodological survey

Ref ID 838
First Author E.A. Akl
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895435623000264?via%3Dihub
Keywords • Living
• General medical
• Currency
• COVID
Problem(s) • Not updated regularly
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Lebanon
Aim To describe the characteristics of living systematic reviews, and to understand their life cycles.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 76 living systematic reviews indexed across Medline, EMBASE, and the Cochrane library between January 2013 and April 2021. Out of all reviews with a ‘planned period of update’ and at least one update (N=19), eight LSRs (42%) had a period since last published version greater than 3 times the planned period of update. No living systematic review included a ‘retirement notice’ in their latest published version.
Number of systematic reviews included 76
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 3971
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description