Table 1 Tools and checklists to aid in systematic review conduct and to assess the reporting, quality of conduct or the risk of bias in a review
Tool purpose | Examples of tools or checklists | Description of an example tool | Targeted users | Available tool for reviews with NMA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Guidance for conducting systematic reviews | MECIR [9] | Detailed guidance for the conduct of systematic reviews of interventions, diagnostic test accuracy, individual patient data, public health and health promotion | • Review authors • Journal editors | No |
Assess the quality of conduct of reviews | AMSTAR-2 is a critical appraisal tool to assess the conduct of intervention reviews including RCTs The 1991 Overview Quality Assessment Questionnaire (OQAQ) is a methodological quality of conduct checklist | • Review authors • Decision makers | No | |
Assess the risk of bias in published reviews | ROBIS [10] | ROBIS is a tool for assessing the risk of bias in reviews. It is aimed at four broad categories of reviews mainly within health care settings: interventions, diagnosis, prognosis and etiology | • Decision makers | Not at present, but in the process RoB NMA tool |
Assess the certainty in the evidence and the strength of recommendations in health care | GRADE [20] | The GRADE working group defined the certainty of a body of evidence as the extent to which one can be confident that a pooled effect estimate is close to the true effect of the intervention. Five domains were assessed: risk of bias, inconsistency, indirectness, imprecision and publication bias | • Review authors | |
Guidelines for the complete reporting of published reviews | PRISMA Update [25] | PRISMA focuses on the reporting of already published reviews evaluating RCTs of interventions. PRISMA can determine whether a review is well described and transparently reported | • Decision makers • Journal editors |