A review found heterogeneous approaches and insufficient reporting in overviews on adverse events

Ref ID 905
First Author T. Sachse
Journal JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2022
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895435622001925?via%3Dihub
Keywords Harms
Pharmacological
Low reporting quality
Overlapping reviews/redundancy
Certainty
Overviews/Umbrella Reviews
Problem(s) Lack of guidance or consistency in systematic overview / umbrella / review of systematic reviews
Methods not described to enable replication
Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided
Funding or sponsor of systematic review not reported
Individual study characteristics not reported sufficiently
Number of systematic reviews included 27
Summary of Findings From 27 included systematic overview reviews of adverse (drug-associated) events (AEs) of pharmacological interventions indexed across MEDLINE, Embase, Epistemonikos, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from inception to May 17, 2021. The median number of included systematic reviews in each overview was 15 (interquartile range 7–34). Study selection methods were reported in 52%, methods for data extraction in 67%, and methods for critical appraisal in 63% of overviews. An assessment of methodological quality of included systematic reviews was performed in 70% of overviews. Only 22% of overviews reported strategies for dealing with overlapping systematic reviews. An assessment of the certainty of the evidence was performed in 33% of overviews.
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