Summary of Findings Tables: Presenting the Main Findings of Cochrane Complementary and Alternative Medicine–related Reviews in a Transparent and Simple Tabular Format

The systematic review is widely accepted as the most reliable and objective method for evaluating the effects of healthcare interventions, including complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. Systematic reviews use explicit, transparent, and well-documented methods to find, evaluate, and synthesize the best available research studies related to a specific research question. Systematic reviews of healthcare treatment typically have focused on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because RCTs are widely regarded as the study design providing the most reliable estimates of a healthcare treatment's effects. Systematic reviewers aim to evaluate and appraise relevant RCTs using objective and reproducible methods to provide an unbiased assessment of the evidence for a given therapy. Systematic reviews sometimes include a meta-analysis, the quantitative combining (pooling) of results from similar but separate RCTs to obtain an overall effect estimate.