Systematic reviews

Abstract

This chapter focuses on evidence synthesis and, in particular, systematic reviews, including meta-analysis. Narrative literature reviews, critical reviews, expert elicitation, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, combined or separate, are examples of evidence-synthesis approaches. A well-executed systematic review is a rigorous and replicable approach to identifying, evaluating and summarizing scientific evidence relevant to a specific clinical or policy question. Systematic review questions can be classified as questions about interventions, causes, disease burden and detection. An extensive literature search is a cornerstone of the systematic review. One of the key features of systematic reviews is the emphasis on extraction and reporting of the magnitude of outcomes and precision of estimates. The essential elements of a meta-analysis are planning, conduct and interpretation. Planning requires deciding which comparisons to make, what summary effect measure to use, which statistical model to use, and which sources of heterogeneity to assess.

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