Articles

A protocol for a systematic review of research on managing behavioural and psychological symptoms in dementia for community-dwelling older people: evidence mapping and syntheses

Non-cognitive behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia affect up to 90% of people with dementia during the disease course and result in distress, increased carer burden, high service utilization and ...

Authors: Daksha Trivedi, Claire Goodman, Angela Dickinson, Heather Gage, Jennifer McLaughlin, Jill Manthorpe, Kunle Ashaye and Steve Iliffe

Challenges in implementing The Institute of Medicine systematic review standards

In 2011, The Institute of Medicine (IOM) identified a set of methodological standards to improve the validity, trustworthiness, and usefulness of systematic reviews. These standards, based on a mix of theoreti...

Authors: Stephanie M Chang, Eric B Bass, Nancy Berkman, Timothy S Carey, Robert L Kane, Joseph Lau and Sara Ratichek

Incidence, prevalence, and occurrence rate of infection among adults hospitalized after traumatic brain injury: study protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Infection occurs commonly among patients hospitalized after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and has been associated with increased intensive care unit and hospital lengths of stay and an elevated risk of poor neu...

Authors: Brittney NV Scott, Derek J Roberts, Helen Lee Robertson, Andreas H Kramer, Kevin B Laupland, Shalina S Ousman, Paul Kubes and David A Zygun

Micronutrient fortification of food and its impact on woman and child health: a systematic review

Vitamins and minerals are essential for growth and metabolism. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 2 billion people are deficient in key vitamins and minerals. Groups most vulnerable to thes...

Authors: Jai K Das, Rehana A Salam, Rohail Kumar and Zulfiqar A Bhutta

Opioids for chronic non-cancer pain: a protocol for a systematic review of randomized controlled trials

Opioids are prescribed frequently and increasingly for the management of chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP). Current systematic reviews have a number of limitations, leaving uncertainty with regard to the benefits...

Authors: Jason W Busse, Stefan Schandelmaier, Mostafa Kamaleldin, Sandy Hsu, John J Riva, Per Olav Vandvik, Ludwig Tsoi, Tommy Lam, Shanil Ebrahim, Bradley Johnston, Lori Oliveri, Luis Montoya, Regina Kunz, Anna Malandrino, Neera Bhatnagar, Sohail M Mulla…

Immigrant women’s experiences of postpartum depression in Canada: a protocol for systematic review using a narrative synthesis

Literature documents that immigrant women in Canada have a higher prevalence of postpartum depression symptomatology than Canadian-born women. There exists a need to synthesize information on the contextual fa...

Authors: Gina MA Higginbottom, Myfanwy Morgan, Joyce O’Mahony, Yvonne Chiu, Deb Kocay, Mirande Alexandre, Joan Forgeron and Marilyn Young

Efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in depression in adults: a systematic review protocol

The role of vitamin D in management of depression is unclear. Results from observational and emerging randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating the efficacy of vitamin D in depression lack consistency ...

Authors: Guowei Li, Lawrence Mbuagbaw, Zainab Samaan, Shiyuan Zhang, Jonathan D Adachi, Alexandra Papaioannou and Lehana Thabane

Interventions provided in the acute phase for mild traumatic brain injury: a systematic review

Most patients who sustain mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) have persistent symptoms at 1 week and 1 month after injury. This systematic review investigated the effectiveness of interventions initiated in acu...

Authors: Jocelyn Gravel, Antonio D’Angelo, Benoit Carrière, Louis Crevier, Miriam H Beauchamp, Jean-Marc Chauny, Maggy Wassef and Nils Chaillet

Individual patient data systematic review and meta-analysis of optic nerve sheath diameter ultrasonography for detecting raised intracranial pressure: protocol of the ONSD research group

The purpose of the optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) research group project is to establish an individual patient-level database from high quality studies of ONSD ultrasonography for the detection of raised i...

Authors: Julie Dubourg, Mahmoud Messerer, Dimitrios Karakitsos, Venkatakrishna Rajajee, Erik Antonsen, Etienne Javouhey, Alessandro Cammarata, Michael Cotton, Roy Thomas Daniel, Carmelo Denaro, Emmanuel Douzinas, Clément Dubost, Moncef Berhouma, Behrouz Kassai, Muriel Rabilloud, Antonino Gullo…

Happy birthday: we are one year old

Authors: David Moher, Lesley Stewart and Paul Shekelle

Detecting, quantifying and adjusting for publication bias in meta-analyses: protocol of a systematic review on methods

Health professionals and policymakers aspire to make healthcare decisions based on the entire relevant research evidence. This, however, can rarely be achieved because a considerable amount of research finding...

Authors: Katharina Felicitas Mueller, Joerg J Meerpohl, Matthias Briel, Gerd Antes, Erik von Elm, Britta Lang, Viktoria Gloy, Edith Motschall, Guido Schwarzer and Dirk Bassler

Effect of rehabilitation length of stay on outcomes in individuals with traumatic brain injury or spinal cord injury: a systematic review protocol

Rehabilitation interventions are a key component of the services required by individuals with neurotrauma to recover or compensate for altered abilities and achieve optimal social participation. Primary studie...

Authors: Marie-Eve Lamontagne, Cynthia Gagnon, Anne-Sophie Allaire and Luc Noreau

Health education interventions to raise awareness of rheumatic fever: a systematic review protocol

There is a significant global health burden associated with acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD), especially in developing countries. ARF and RHD most often strike children and young a...

Authors: Laura Susan Ramsey, Lauren Watkins and Mark Emmanuel Engel

Fatigue in adults with traumatic brain injury: predictors and consequences. A systematic review of longitudinal study protocols

Despite strong indications that fatigue is the most common and debilitating symptom after traumatic brain injury, little is known about its frequency, natural history, or relation to other factors. The current...

Authors: Tatyana Mollayeva, Tetyana Kendzerska, Shirin Mollayeva, Colin M Shapiro, Angela Colantonio and J David Cassidy

Physical activity for the prevention and treatment of major chronic disease: an overview of systematic reviews

The evidence that higher levels of physical activity and/or lower levels of physical inactivity are associated with beneficial health-related outcomes stems mainly from observational studies. Findings from the...

Authors: David Nunan, Kamal R Mahtani, Nia Roberts and Carl Heneghan

Protocol for a systematic review on inequalities in postnatal care services utilization in low- and middle-income countries

Each year, 287,000 women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, and 3.8 million newborns die before reaching 28 days of life. The near totality (99%) of maternal and neonatal deaths occurs ...

Authors: Étienne V Langlois, Malgorzata Miszkurka, Daniela Ziegler, Igor Karp and Maria Victoria Zunzunegui

Individual patient data meta-analysis of trials investigating the effectiveness of intra-articular glucocorticoid injections in patients with knee or hip osteoarthritis: an OA Trial Bank protocol for a systematic review

Based on small to moderate effect sizes for the wide range of symptomatic treatments in osteoarthritis (OA), and on the heterogeneity of OA patients, treatment guidelines for OA have stressed the need for rese...

Authors: Marienke van Middelkoop, Krysia S Dziedzic, Michael Doherty, Weiya Zhang, Johannes W Bijlsma, Timothy E McAlindon, Stefan L Lohmander and Sita MA Bierma-Zeinstra

Use of case reports and the Adverse Event Reporting System in systematic reviews: overcoming barriers to assess the link between Crohn’s disease medications and hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma

To identify demographic and clinical characteristics associated with cases of hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma (HSTCL) in patients with Crohn’s disease, and to assess strength of evidence for a causal relationshi...

Authors: Saranya A Selvaraj, Elizabeth Chairez, Lisa M Wilson, Mark Lazarev, Eric B Bass and Susan Hutfless

A systematic review of individual patient data meta-analyses on surgical interventions

Compared to subgroup analyses in a single study or in a traditional meta-analysis, an individual patient data meta-analysis (IPDMA) offers important potential advantages. We studied how many IPDMAs report on s...

Authors: Gerjon Hannink, Hein G Gooszen, Cornelis JHM van Laarhoven and Maroeska M Rovers

Bibliometric and content analysis of the Cochrane Complementary Medicine Field specialized register of controlled trials

The identification of eligible controlled trials for systematic reviews of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) interventions can be difficult. To increase access to these difficult to locate trials, t...

Authors: L Susan Wieland, Eric Manheimer, Margaret Sampson, Jabez Paul Barnabas, Lex M Bouter, Kiho Cho, Myeong Soo Lee, Xun Li, Jianping Liu, David Moher, Tetsuro Okabe, Elizabeth D Pienaar, Byung-Cheul Shin, Prathap Tharyan, Kiichiro Tsutani, Daniëlle A van der Windt…

Hysterosalpingosonography for diagnosing tubal occlusion in subfertile women: a systematic review protocol

Hysterosalpingosonography has been suggested as a less invasive alternative to hysterosalpingography for detecting tubal occlusion among subfertile women. We aim to determine the diagnostic accuracy of hystero...

Authors: Sarah Maheux-Lacroix, Amélie Boutin, Lynne Moore, Marie-Ève Bergeron, Emmanuel Bujold, Philippe Y Laberge, Madeleine Lemyre and Sylvie Dodin

Interventions to reduce dependency in personal activities of daily living in community-dwelling adults who use homecare services: protocol for a systematic review

There is a growing demand for services whereby individuals receive assistance from care workers for personal care within the home. This has led to the development of re-ablement or restorative homecare service...

Authors: Phillip J Whitehead, Avril ER Drummond, Marion F Walker and Ruth H Parry

Study protocol: a systematic review of pediatric shared decision making

Shared decision making in pediatrics is unique because it often involves active participation of both the child or adolescent patient and his or her caregiver(s) in the decision making process with the clinici...

Authors: Kirk D Wyatt, Gabriela Prutsky Lopez, Juan Pablo Domecq Garces, Patricia Erwin, William B Brinkman, Victor M Montori and Annie LeBlanc

Safety, effectiveness, and cost of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors versus intermediate acting insulin for type 2 diabetes: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) results from insulin resistance and relative insulin deficiency. T2DM treatment is a step-wise approach beginning with lifestyle modifications (for example, diet, exercise), fol...

Authors: Andrea C Tricco, Jesmin Antony, Charlene Soobiah, Brenda Hemmelgarn, David Moher, Brian Hutton, Catherine H Yu, Sumit R Majumdar and Sharon E Straus

Safety of serotonin (5-HT3) receptor antagonists in patients undergoing surgery and chemotherapy: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Serotonin (5-HT3) receptor antagonists are a class of antiemetic medications often used to prevent nausea and vomiting among patients undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery. However, recent studies s...

Authors: Andrea C Tricco, Charlene Soobiah, Jesmin Antony, Brenda Hemmelgarn, David Moher, Brian Hutton and Sharon E Straus

Interventions to decrease the risk of adverse cardiac events for post-surgery or chemotherapy patients taking serotonin (5-HT3) receptor antagonists: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Patients undergoing surgery or chemotherapy often experience nausea and vomiting. To increase their quality of life and treatment satisfaction, antiemetic medication, such as serotonin receptor antagonists, is...

Authors: Andrea C Tricco, Charlene Soobiah, Jesmin Antony, Brenda Hemmelgarn, David Moher, Brian Hutton and Sharon E Straus

Comparative effectiveness of monotherapies and combination therapies for patients with hypertension: protocol for a systematic review with network meta-analyses

Hypertension has been cited as the most common attributable risk factor for death worldwide, and in Canada more than one of every five adults had this diagnosis in 2007. In addition to different lifestyle modi...

Authors: Brian Hutton, Jennifer Tetzlaff, Fatemeh Yazdi, Justin Thielman, Salmaan Kanji, Dean Fergusson, Lise Bjerre, Edward Mills, Kristian Thorlund, Andrea Tricco, Sharon Straus, David Moher and Frans HH Leenen

Health equity: evidence synthesis and knowledge translation methods

At the Rio Summit in 2011 on Social Determinants of Health, the global community recognized a pressing need to take action on reducing health inequities. This requires an improved evidence base on the effects ...

Authors: Vivian A Welch, Mark Petticrew, Jennifer O’Neill, Elizabeth Waters, Rebecca Armstrong, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Damian Francis, Tracey Perez Koehlmoos, Elizabeth Kristjansson, Tomas Pantoja and Peter Tugwell

Completeness of reporting of setting and health worker cadre among trials on antenatal iron and folic acid supplementation in pregnancy: an assessment based on two Cochrane reviews

Poor reporting of medical trials has triggered the development of trial reporting standards within the scientific community. In addition to a description of the proposed intervention, adequate information abou...

Authors: Rachel Harper, Simon Lewin, Claire Glenton and Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas

Systematic review of the effectiveness of training programs in writing for scholarly publication, journal editing, and manuscript peer review (protocol)

An estimated $100 billion is lost to ‘waste’ in biomedical research globally, annually, much of which comes from the poor quality of published research. One area of waste involves bias in reporting research, w...

Authors: James Galipeau, David Moher, Becky Skidmore, Craig Campbell, Paul Hendry, D William Cameron, Paul C Hébert and Anita Palepu

A comparative assessment of three formulations of botulinum toxin A for facial rhytides: a systematic review and meta-analyses

Botulinum toxin A is a commonly used biological medication in the field of facial plastic surgery. Currently, there are three distinct formulations of botulinum toxin A, each with their purported benefits and ...

Authors: James P Bonaparte, David Ellis, Jason G Quinn, Mohammed T Ansari, Jessica Rabski and Shaun J Kilty

Clinical risk factors for late intestinal toxicity after radiotherapy: a systematic review protocol

Late intestinal toxicity after radiotherapy (LITAR) not only limits the radiation dose, which subsequently leads to unfavorable clinical outcomes, but also significantly lowers the quality of life in an increa...

Authors: Qiyuan Qin, Qingshan Huang, Qinghua Zhong, Xinjuan Fan, Dianke Chen and Lei Wang

Efficacy of falls prevention interventions: protocol for a systematic review and network meta-analysis

Falls are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in older adults. Although numerous trials of falls prevention interventions have been completed, there is extensive variation in their intervention componen...

Authors: Andrea C Tricco, Elise Cogo, Jayna Holroyd-Leduc, Kathryn M Sibley, Fabio Feldman, Gillian Kerr, Sumit R Majumdar, Susan Jaglal and Sharon E Straus

Diagnostic performance of alpha-fetoprotein, lens culinaris agglutinin-reactive alpha-fetoprotein, des-gamma carboxyprothrombin, and glypican-3 for the detection of hepatocellular carcinoma: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol

Diagnosis of early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) followed by curative resection or liver transplantation offers the best chance for long-term patient survival. Clinically, ultrasonography has suboptimal...

Authors: Ting-Shuo Huang, Yu-Chiau Shyu, Robin Turner, Huang-Yang Chen and Pei-Jer Chen

Are systematic reviews up-to-date at the time of publication?

Systematic reviews provide a synthesis of evidence for practitioners, for clinical practice guideline developers, and for those designing and justifying primary research. Having an up-to-date and comprehensive...

Authors: Elaine M Beller, Joyce Kee-Hsin Chen, Una Li-Hsiang Wang and Paul P Glasziou

Screening for cervical cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The systematic review on which this paper is based provided evidence for the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care to update their guideline regarding screening for cervical cancer. In this article we ...

Authors: Leslea Peirson, Donna Fitzpatrick-Lewis, Donna Ciliska and Rachel Warren

Defining publication bias: protocol for a systematic review of highly cited articles and proposal for a new framework

Selective publication of studies, which is commonly called publication bias, is widely recognized. Over the years a new nomenclature for other types of bias related to non-publication or distortion related to ...

Authors: Katharina Felicitas Müller, Matthias Briel, Alexandra D’Amario, Jos Kleijnen, Ana Marusic, Elizabeth Wager, Gerd Antes, Erik von Elm, Britta Lang, Edith Motschall, Viktoria Gloy, Guido Schwarzer, Doug Altman, Joerg J Meerpohl and Dirk Bassler

Systematic review and stratified meta-analysis of the efficacy of RhoA and Rho kinase inhibitors in animal models of ischaemic stroke

There is currently only one clinically approved drug, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), for the treatment of acute ischaemic stroke. The RhoA pathway, including RhoA and its downstream effector Rho kinase (R...

Authors: Hanna M Vesterinen, Gillian L Currie, Samantha Carter, Sarah Mee, Ralf Watzlawick, Kieren J Egan, Malcolm R Macleod and Emily S Sena

A qualitative study into the difficulties experienced by healthcare decision makers when reading a Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy review

Cochrane reviews are one of the best known and most trusted sources of evidence-based information in health care. While steps have been taken to make Cochrane intervention reviews accessible to a diverse reade...

Authors: Zhivko Zhelev, Ruth Garside and Christopher Hyde

Strategies for obtaining unpublished drug trial data: a qualitative interview study

Authors of systematic reviews have difficulty obtaining unpublished data for their reviews. This project aimed to provide an in-depth description of the experiences of authors in searching for and gaining acce...

Authors: Nicole Wolfe, Peter C Gøtzsche and Lisa Bero

Environmental interventions to reduce fear of crime: systematic review of effectiveness

Fear of crime is associated with negative health and wellbeing outcomes, and may mediate some impacts of the built environment on public health. A range of environmental interventions have been hypothesized to...

Authors: Theo Lorenc, Mark Petticrew, Margaret Whitehead, David Neary, Stephen Clayton, Kath Wright, Hilary Thomson, Steven Cummins, Amanda Sowden and Adrian Renton

Examining health promotion interventions for patients with chronic conditions using a novel patient-centered complexity model: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Successful chronic care self-management requires adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviors, but many healthcare-based health promotion interventions have resulted in small and unsustainable changes in patient b...

Authors: Amy E Bodde, Nathan D Shippee, Carl R May, Frances S Mair, Patricia J Erwin, M Hassan Murad and Victor M Montori

Protocol for systematic reviews of determinants/correlates of obesity-related dietary and physical activity behaviors in young children (preschool 0 to 6 years): evidence mapping and syntheses

The aim of these reviews is to inform the design and content of interventions to reduce obesity in young children. The behaviors that are associated with obesity/overweight have been studied extensively; howev...

Authors: Rajalakshmi Lakshman, Veena Mazarello Paes, Kathryn Hesketh, Claire O’Malley, Helen Moore, Ken Ong, Simon Griffin, Esther van Sluijs and Carolyn Summerbell

Tackling inequalities in obesity: a protocol for a systematic review of the effectiveness of public health interventions at reducing socioeconomic inequalities in obesity among adults

Socioeconomic inequalities in obesity and associated risk factors for obesity are widening throughout developed countries worldwide. Tackling obesity is high on the public health agenda both in the United King...

Authors: Clare L Bambra, Frances C Hillier, Helen J Moore, Joanne-Marie Cairns-Nagi and Carolyn D Summerbell

Improving quality of care for persons with diabetes: an overview of systematic reviews - what does the evidence tell us?

Ensuring high quality care for persons with diabetes remains a challenge for healthcare systems globally with consistent evidence of suboptimal care and outcomes. There is increasing interest in quality improv...

Authors: Julia Worswick, S Carolyn Wayne, Rachel Bennett, Michelle Fiander, Alain Mayhew, Michelle C Weir, Katrina J Sullivan and Jeremy M Grimshaw

Risk of heart failure and edema associated with the use of pregabalin: a systematic review

Pregabalin is used in the treatment of postherpetic neuralgia, diabetic neuropathic pain, partial seizures, anxiety disorders and fibromyalgia. Recognized adverse effects associated with its use include cognit...

Authors: Joanne M Ho, Andrea C Tricco, Laure Perrier, Maggie Chen, David N Juurlink and Sharon E Straus

A protocol for a systematic review on the impact of unpublished studies and studies published in the gray literature in meta-analyses

Meta-analyses are particularly vulnerable to the effects of publication bias. Despite methodologists’ best efforts to locate all evidence for a given topic the most comprehensive searches are likely to miss un...

Authors: Christine Schmucker, Annette Bluemle, Matthias Briel, Susan Portalupi, Britta Lang, Edith Motschall, Guido Schwarzer, Dirk Bassler, Katharina F Mueller, Erik von Elm and Joerg J Meerpohl

Publication bias in animal research: a systematic review protocol

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of pre-clinical studies, in vivo animal experiments in particular, can influence clinical care. Publication bias is one of the major threats of validity in systematic reviews ...

Authors: Matthias Briel, Katharina F Müller, Joerg J Meerpohl, Erik von Elm, Britta Lang, Edith Motschall, Viktoria Gloy, Francois Lamontagne, Guido Schwarzer and Dirk Bassler

Lipophilic versus hydrophilic statin therapy for heart failure: a protocol for an adjusted indirect comparison meta-analysis

Statins are known to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in primary and secondary prevention studies. Subsequently, a number of nonrandomised studies have shown statins improve clinical outcomes in p...

Authors: Kwadwo Osei Bonsu, Amudha Kadirvelu and Daniel Diamond Reidpath

An empirical investigation of the potential impact of selective inclusion of results in systematic reviews of interventions: study protocol

Systematic reviewers may encounter a multiplicity of outcome data in the reports of randomised controlled trials included in the review (for example, multiple measurement instruments measuring the same outcome...

Authors: Matthew J Page, Joanne E McKenzie, Sally E Green and Andrew B Forbes