ArticleBMC medicine2016
Wasted research when systematic reviews fail to provide a complete and up-to-date evidence synthesis: the example of lung cancer.
Article in BMC medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 127 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methodological quality of network meta-analyses of Chinese herbal medicine could be improved: an evidence mapping.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Pooled it
- Systematic online living evidence summaries: emerging tools to accelerate evidence synthesis.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2023Pooled it
- The role of diet in renal cell carcinoma incidence: an umbrella review of meta-analyses of observational studies.BMC medicine · 2022Pooled it
- PsychOpen CAMA: Publication of community-augmented meta-analyses in psychology.Research synthesis methods · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
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- LOCATE: a prospective evaluation of the value of Leveraging Ongoing Citation Acquisition Techniques for living Evidence syntheses.Systematic reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Crowdsourcing the Citation Screening Process for Systematic Reviews: Validation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Using full agreement across multiple large language models for title-and-abstract screening in systematic reviews: a proof-of-concept.Systematic reviews · 2026Article
- The Trial Bank initiative to promote trustworthy living evidence for medication safety (PROMISE) of children: design and pilot validation.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Human-in-the-Loop Artificial Intelligence System for Systematic Literature Review: Methods and Validations for the AutoLit Review Software.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2025Article
- Natural product extracts for ischemic stroke: a methodological evaluation and meta-epidemiological analysis.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- A living critical interpretive synthesis to yield a framework on the production and dissemination of living evidence syntheses for decision-making.Implementation science : IS · 2024Review
- Methodological review of NMA bias concepts provides groundwork for the development of a list of concepts for potential inclusion in a new risk of bias tool for network meta-analysis (RoB NMA Tool).Systematic reviews · 2024Article
- Several methods for assessing research waste in reviews with a systematic search: a scoping review.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Challenges for research uptake for health policymaking and practice in low- and middle-income countries: a scoping review.Health research policy and systems · 2023Article
- Living health technology assessments: how close to living reality?BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2023Article
- Individual Participant Data Network Meta-Analysis of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy or Chemoradiotherapy in Esophageal or Gastroesophageal Junction Carcinoma.Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology · 2023Article
- Meta-research evaluating redundancy and use of systematic reviews when planning new studies in health research: a scoping review.Systematic reviews · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMultiple treatments are frequently available for a given condition, and clinicians and patients need a comprehensive, up-to-date synthesis of evidence for all competing treatments. We aimed to quantify the waste of research related to the failure of systematic reviews to provide a complete and up-to-date evidence synthesis over time.
methodsWe performed a series of systematic overviews and networks of randomized trials assessing the gap between evidence covered by systematic reviews and available trials of second-line treatments for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. We searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and other resources sequentially by year from 2009 to March 2, 2015. We sequentially compared the amount of evidence missing from systematic reviews to the randomized evidence available for inclusion each year. We constructed cumulative networks of randomized evidence over time and evaluated the proportion of trials, patients, treatments, and treatment comparisons not covered by systematic reviews on December 31 each year from 2009 to 2015.
resultsWe identified 77 trials (28,636 patients) assessing 47 treatments with 54 comparisons and 29 systematic reviews (13 published after 2013). From 2009 to 2015, the evidence covered by existing systematic reviews was consistently incomplete: 45 % to 70 % of trials; 30 % to 58 % of patients; 40 % to 66 % of treatments; and 38 % to 71 % of comparisons were missing. In the cumulative networks of randomized evidence, 10 % to 17 % of treatment comparisons were partially covered by systematic reviews and 55 % to 85 % were partially or not covered.
conclusionsWe illustrate how systematic reviews of a given condition provide a fragmented, out-of-date panorama of the evidence for all treatments. This waste of research might be reduced by the development of live cumulative network meta-analyses.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.