The methodological quality of systematic reviews regarding the Core Outcome Set (COS) development

Ref ID 999
First Author H. Cao
Journal BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Year Of Publishing 2024
URL https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12874-024-02182-w
Keywords • Neurology
• Gastroenterology
• Outcomes
• Urology
• Musculoskeletal
Problem(s) • No registered or published protocol
• Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality
• Limited quality assessment or no risk of bias
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country China
Checklists • AMSTAR 2
Aim To investigate the methodological quality (AMSTAR-2) of Systematic Reviews (SRs) indexed on PubMed from inception to May 2022 that serve as a basis for Core Outcome Set (COS) development and assess the quality of these SRs using complete AMSTAR 2.0.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings The study included 175 SRs indexed on PubMed from inception to May 2022 focused on five diseases: musculoskeletal system or connective tissue disease, injury or poisoning, digestive system disease, nervous system disease, and genitourinary system disease. Although 88.00% of SRs included randomized controlled trials (RCTs), only a few SRs (23.38%) employed appropriate tools to assess the risk of bias in RCTs. AMSTAR 2.0 assessment indicated that most SRs (93.71%) were rated as ‘’critically low’’ to ‘’low’’ in terms of overall confidence. The overall confidence of SRs with protocols was significantly higher than that without protocols (P <.001). Compared to the SRs with protocols on Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET), SRs with protocols on PROSPERO were of better overall confidence (P = .017).
Number of systematic reviews included 175
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 755
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description