BMJ 2001;323:681-684 ( 22 September )

Education and debate

The need for caution in interpreting high quality systematic reviews

Kevork Hopayian, general practitioner. 

Seahills, Leiston Road, Aldeburgh IP15 5PL

k.hopayian@btinternet.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The emergence of systematic reviews raised hopes of a new era for the objective appraisal of evidence available on a given topic. Such reviews promised a synthesis of trial results, which could be conflicting, and an escape from the personal bias inherent in traditional reviews and expert opinion.¹ As the discipline of systematic reviews has evolved, however, two new problems have arisen: the quality of reviews is variable ^{2 3} ; and two or more systematic reviews on the same topic may arrive at different conclusions, raising questions on the validity^4-7 or the relevance⁸ of the conclusions. Moreover, adherence to a "checklist" system when appraising trials may overlook important clinical details in the original trials and so reduce the validity of the review. I uncovered this last shortcoming when I recently conducted a study of three systematic reviews; the study is reported here.

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	Background

Guidelines have been drawn up to improve the quality . . . [Full text of this article]

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Interpreting Systematic Reviews - More than caution is required

James B Connelly
bmj.com, 10 Oct 2001 [Full text]