Assessing the Reporting of Harms in Systematic Reviews Focused on the Therapeutic and Cosmetic Uses of Botulinum Toxin

Ref ID 857
First Author K. Cox
Journal CLINICAL DRUG INVESTIGATION
Year Of Publishing 2023
URL https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40261-022-01235-6
Keywords • Harms
• Dermatology
• Low methodological quality
• Disclosure
Problem(s) • Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed
• Selective reporting of harms / safety / adverse events / side effects
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Following guidelines is no guarantee of a rigorous systematic review
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United States
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To identify completeness of harms reporting for BoNT treatment within systematic reviews (SRs), assess quality of SRs using the AMSTAR-2 tool, and determine the degree of overlap among primary studies within each SR.
Level of Investigation Analytical
Summary of Findings From 90 included systematic reviews focused on the therapeutic and cosmetic uses of botulinum toxin indexed across Embase, Epistemonikos, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews up to May 31 2022. Of the 90 included systematic reviews, 70 completed less than 50% of harms items. In the AMSTAR 2 evaluation 83 had “critically low” methodological quality rating (92.2%). There were conflicts of interest in 24.4% and funding sources were not mentioned in 36.7%. Two statistically significant associations were found using the Kruskal-Wallis test: greater completeness of harms reporting (Mahady assessment) was associated with lower AMSTAR-2 ratings (p = 0.0060) and if harms was reported as a primary outcome (p = 0.0001). Authors’ adherence to PRISMA guidelines showed no significant relationship with their completeness of the harms reporting (Mahady assessment) (p > 0.05).
Number of systematic reviews included 90
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1264