ArticleBMC medical research methodology2021
Methodological quality for systematic reviews of adverse events with surgical interventions: a cross-sectional survey.
Article in BMC medical research methodology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prehabilitation and postoperative outcomes in colorectal surgery: an umbrella review.Journal of anesthesia, analgesia and critical care · 2026Review
- Quality of Systematic Reviews with Network Meta-Analyses on JAK Inhibitors in the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis: Application of the AMSTAR 2 Scale.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- [Methodological and ethical congruence in medical research protocols at a local hospital committee].Revista medica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social · 2026Observational
- Quality of systematic reviews in African emergency medicine: a cross-sectional methodological study.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2023Article
- Inaccuracy in the Scientific Record and Open Postpublication Critique.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAn increasing number of systematic reviews assessed the safety of surgical interventions over time. How well these systematic reviews were designed and conducted determines the reliability of evidence. In this study, we aimed to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews on the safety of surgical interventions.
methodsWe searched PubMed for systematic reviews of surgical interventions with safety as the exclusive outcome from 1st-Jan, 2015 to 1st-Jan, 2020. The methodological quality of eligible systematic reviews was evaluated according to the AMSTAR 2.0 instrument. The primary outcomes were the number of methodological weaknesses and the global methodological quality. The proportion of each methodological weakness among eligible systematic reviews was compared by three pre-defined stratification variables. The absolute difference of the proportion (PD) was used as the effect estimator, with the two-tailed z-test for the significance.
resultsWe identified 127 systematic reviews from 18,636 records. None (n = 0, 0.00%) of them could be rated as "high" in terms of the global methodological quality; in contrast, they were either rated as "low" (n = 18, 14.17%) or as "critically low" (n = 109, 85.83%). The median number of methodological weaknesses of these systematic reviews was 8 (interquartile range, IQR: 6 to 9), in which 4 (IQR: 2 to 4) were critical weaknesses. Systematic reviews that used any reporting guideline (e.g., domain 13, PD = -0.22, 95% CI: - 0.39, - 0.06; p = 0.01) and developed a protocol in advance (e.g., domain 6, PD = -0.20, 95% CI: - 0.39, - 0.01; p = 0.04) were less likely to have methodological weakness in some domains but not for the rest (e.g., domain 8, PD = 0.04, 95% CI: - 0.14, 0.21; p = 0.68; with protocol vs. without).
conclusionsThe methodological quality of current systematic reviews of adverse events with surgical interventions was poor. Further efforts, for example, encouraging researchers to develop a protocol in advance, are needed to enhance the methodological quality of these systematic reviews.
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