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Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions

BACKGROUND: Hundreds of studies of maternity care interventions have been published, too many for most people involved in providing maternity care to identify and consider when making decisions. It became apparent that systematic reviews of individual studies were required to appraise, summarise and...

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Autores principales: Smith, Valerie, Devane, Declan, Begley, Cecily M, Clarke, Mike
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039637/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21291558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-15
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author Smith, Valerie
Devane, Declan
Begley, Cecily M
Clarke, Mike
author_facet Smith, Valerie
Devane, Declan
Begley, Cecily M
Clarke, Mike
author_sort Smith, Valerie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Hundreds of studies of maternity care interventions have been published, too many for most people involved in providing maternity care to identify and consider when making decisions. It became apparent that systematic reviews of individual studies were required to appraise, summarise and bring together existing studies in a single place. However, decision makers are increasingly faced by a plethora of such reviews and these are likely to be of variable quality and scope, with more than one review of important topics. Systematic reviews (or overviews) of reviews are a logical and appropriate next step, allowing the findings of separate reviews to be compared and contrasted, providing clinical decision makers with the evidence they need. METHODS: The methods used to identify and appraise published and unpublished reviews systematically, drawing on our experiences and good practice in the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews are described. The process of identifying and appraising all published reviews allows researchers to describe the quality of this evidence base, summarise and compare the review's conclusions and discuss the strength of these conclusions. RESULTS: Methodological challenges and possible solutions are described within the context of (i) sources, (ii) study selection, (iii) quality assessment (i.e. the extent of searching undertaken for the reviews, description of study selection and inclusion criteria, comparability of included studies, assessment of publication bias and assessment of heterogeneity), (iv) presentation of results, and (v) implications for practice and research. CONCLUSION: Conducting a systematic review of reviews highlights the usefulness of bringing together a summary of reviews in one place, where there is more than one review on an important topic. The methods described here should help clinicians to review and appraise published reviews systematically, and aid evidence-based clinical decision-making.
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spelling pubmed-30396372011-02-16 Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions Smith, Valerie Devane, Declan Begley, Cecily M Clarke, Mike BMC Med Res Methodol Research Article BACKGROUND: Hundreds of studies of maternity care interventions have been published, too many for most people involved in providing maternity care to identify and consider when making decisions. It became apparent that systematic reviews of individual studies were required to appraise, summarise and bring together existing studies in a single place. However, decision makers are increasingly faced by a plethora of such reviews and these are likely to be of variable quality and scope, with more than one review of important topics. Systematic reviews (or overviews) of reviews are a logical and appropriate next step, allowing the findings of separate reviews to be compared and contrasted, providing clinical decision makers with the evidence they need. METHODS: The methods used to identify and appraise published and unpublished reviews systematically, drawing on our experiences and good practice in the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews are described. The process of identifying and appraising all published reviews allows researchers to describe the quality of this evidence base, summarise and compare the review's conclusions and discuss the strength of these conclusions. RESULTS: Methodological challenges and possible solutions are described within the context of (i) sources, (ii) study selection, (iii) quality assessment (i.e. the extent of searching undertaken for the reviews, description of study selection and inclusion criteria, comparability of included studies, assessment of publication bias and assessment of heterogeneity), (iv) presentation of results, and (v) implications for practice and research. CONCLUSION: Conducting a systematic review of reviews highlights the usefulness of bringing together a summary of reviews in one place, where there is more than one review on an important topic. The methods described here should help clinicians to review and appraise published reviews systematically, and aid evidence-based clinical decision-making. BioMed Central 2011-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3039637/ /pubmed/21291558 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-15 Text en Copyright ©2011 Smith et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Smith, Valerie
Devane, Declan
Begley, Cecily M
Clarke, Mike
Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title_full Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title_fullStr Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title_full_unstemmed Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title_short Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
title_sort methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039637/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21291558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-11-15
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