Assessing the Reporting and Frequency of Harms in Systematic Reviews Focused on Minimally Invasive Hysterectomies: A Cross-sectional Analysis

Ref ID 841
First Author J. Autaubo
Journal JOURNAL OF MINIMALLY INVASIVE GYNECOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36442755/
Keywords • Harms
• Surgery
• Low reporting quality
Problem(s) • Low reporting (PRISMA) quality
• Errors or omissions in search strategy
• Selective reporting of harms / safety / adverse events / side effects
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United States
Aim To assess the quality of harms reporting in systematic reviews regarding minimally invasive hysterectomies.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 52 systematic reviews of minimally invasive hysterectomies indexed in MEDLINE (PubMed and Ovid), Embase, Epistemonikos, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews on May 15 2022. Harms reporting was more complete than hypothesized, but still had deficiencies throughout, such as inconsistent use of severity scales to classify harms. The study found that >44 of included systematic reviews (of 52; 84.6%) reported >50% of the harms items. Completeness of harms reporting was significantly associated with harms specification as a primary outcome (p <.05). The corrected covered area was 0.60%. Harms were stated in the title or abstract in 27 systematic reviews (of 52; 51.9%). Harms were listed and separately defined within the Methods section in 46 systematic reviews (of 52; 88.5%). Harms language was not reported in the search strategy for 40 systematic reviews (of 52; 76.9%).
Number of systematic reviews included 52
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 456