Systemic Review and Meta-analysis

Purpose and Significance of Systemic Review

• The purpose of a Systemic Review is to provide a comprehensive and unbiased summary of existing research on a specific topic.
• The significance of a Systemic Review lies in its ability to synthesize all relevant studies, providing a clear understanding of the topic and informing evidence-based decision-making.

Steps Underlying the Reviewing Process

• The reviewing process in a Systemic Review involves explicitly and clearly defined steps to ensure transparency and reproducibility.
• These steps include defining a research question, identifying relevant studies, selecting studies, assessing study quality, extracting data, and synthesizing results.

Statistical Method and Clinicians' Use

• The term used to describe the statistical method that combines results from several primary studies is 'Meta-analysis'.
• Clinicians use Systemic Reviews to inform their practice, as they provide a comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the best available evidence on a specific topic.

PICO Framework

• The PICO framework stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome, and is used to define a research question for a Systemic Review.

Electronic Medical Databases and MeSH Terms

• The most important electronic medical databases to perform a comprehensive search include PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library.
• 'MeSH' terms refer to Medical Subject Headings, a controlled vocabulary used to index and retrieve biomedical literature.

Selection Process and Data Extraction

• At least two investigators should be involved in the selection process to minimize bias and ensure consistency.
• The purpose of data extraction in systematic reviews is to collect and organize the data from each study in a structured and standardized way.

Assessing Study Quality and Presentation

• The purpose of assessing study quality in systematic reviews is to evaluate the risk of bias and methodological quality of each study.
• The preferred form of presentation for multiple studies to answer a clinical question is a forest plot, which visually displays the results of each study.

Meta-analysis

• Meta-analysis is used in systematic reviews to combine the results of multiple studies, providing a more precise estimate of the effect size and increasing the power to detect significant differences.

MeSH Terms and Scale

• 'MeSH' stands for Medical Subject Headings.
• The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale is not mentioned as a tool for assessing study quality.