4,952,678 papers found

The systematic review "movement" that has transformed medical journal reports of clinical trials and reviews of clinical trials has taken hold in public health, with the most recent milestone, the publication of the first edition of The Guide to Community Health Services in 2005. In this paper we define and distinguish…

OBJECTIVE: To compare and contrast different knowledge synthesis methods and map their specific steps through a scoping review to gain a better understanding of how to select the most appropriate knowledge synthesis method to answer research questions of complex evidence. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Electronic databases…

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The Cochrane Drugs and Alcohol Group aims to produce, update, and disseminate systematic reviews on the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of problematic drug and alcohol use. This paper describes what the Group has done since the 1990s to produce evidence to guide policy, practice, and…

The insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome is characterized by the variable co-existence of hyperinsulinemia, obesity, dyslipidemia (small dense low-density lipoprotein, hypertriglyceridemia, and decreased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol), and hypertension. The pathogenesis of the syndrome has multiple origins. How…

The key to accurate decision-making is to use the best available evidence. Systematic reviews aim to identify and combine evidence using systematic methods to minimize bias to provide reliable data for patient care. While systematic reviews can address different clinical questions, the methodology is most developed for…

Decisions related to a spectrum of nutrition-related public health and clinical concerns must consider many factors and are best informed by evaluating the totality and quality of the evidence. Systematic review (SR) is a structured process to evaluate, compare, and synthesize relevant evidence for the SR-specific ques…

BACKGROUND: Although chronic pain is generally treated with pharmacological and surgical interventions, many patients still fail to reach adequate pain relief through these methods. Patients and providers have looked to complementary and alternative strategies for managing chronic pain due to these methods' feasibility…

OBJECTIVES: In this paper, we compile and describe the main approaches proposed in the literature to include methodological quality (MQ) or risk of bias (RoB) into research synthesis. We also meta-review how the RoB of observational primary studies is being assessed and to what extent the results are incorporated in th…

Performing a peer review of an article under consideration for publication requires not only an understanding of the subject matter, but also a systematic approach that includes screening for conflicts of interest; determining whether the manuscript is within or outside the reviewer's area of expertise; properly classi…

Systematic reviews are an essential tool for researchers, prevention providers and policy makers who want to remain current with the evidence in the field. Systematic review must adhere to strict standards, as the results can provide a more objective appraisal of evidence for making scientific decisions than traditiona…

The welfare state distributes financial resources to its citizens - protecting them in times of adversity. Variations in how such social protection policies are administered have been attributed to important differences in population health. The aim of this systematic review of reviews is to update and appraise the evi…

OBJECTIVE: To describe where papers come from in a systematic review of complex evidence. Method Audit of how the 495 primary sources for the review were originally identified. RESULTS: Only 30% of sources were obtained from the protocol defined at the outset of the study (that is, from the database and hand searches)…

Systematic reviews are designed to answer a focused clinical question. They employ a predetermined explicit methodology to comprehensively search for, select, appraise, and analyze studies. Meta-analysis is the statistical pooling of the results of studies that are part of a systematic review. Systematic reviews are re…

BACKGROUND: Effective interventions to increase vegetable intake are urgently needed. This systematic rapid review aimed to summarise the effectiveness of interventions targeting increased vegetable intakes across diverse settings. METHODOLOGY: The review was guided by the conduct of rapid reviews from the Cochrane Ha…

Manual therapy for neck pain enjoys a long history, with increasing popularity in recent times. The evidence base for manual therapies for neck pain consists of a reasonably large body of clinical trials, an even greater number of systematic reviews and, more recently, a number of practice guidelines. We have conducted…

OBJECTIVE: Case series can influence clinical practice but are often omitted from systematic reviews. We evaluated the contribution of case series to a systematic review of radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) for treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Analysis of the results of a systemat…

Systematic reviews answer clinical questions by finding and evaluating all available evidence. The systematic review is a powerful tool to help clinicians use evidence for patient care decisions. There are many sources for high-quality systematic reviews. Like all scientific studies there are potential biases, but syst…

BACKGROUND: Because of the rising number of scientific publications, it is important to have a means of jointly summarizing and assessing different studies on a single topic. Systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses of published data, and meta-analyses of individual data (pooled reanalyses) are now being published…

We examined one of the first published of the several systematic reviews being part of WHO's renewed initiative to assess the evidence of associations between man-made radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMF) and adverse health effects in humans. The examined review addresses experimental studies of pregnancy…

OBJECTIVES: Systematic reviews of quantitative evidence are well established in health and social care. Systematic reviews of qualitative evidence are increasingly available, but volume, topics covered, methods used, and reporting quality are largely unknown. We provide a descriptive overview of systematic reviews of q…