Use of tools for assessing the methodological quality of primary research in leading neurosurgical journals: A review of reviews.

Autor: Savage AJ; Department of Neurosurgery, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Electronic address: alexsavage12@icloud.com., Shafik CG; Department of Neurosurgery, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia., Savage SA; Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia., Catalano JD; Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia., Tee JW; Department of Neurosurgery, Alfred Health, Melbourne, Australia., Akhlaghi H; Department of Emergency Medicine, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia., Dhillon RS; Department of Neurosurgery, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia; Department of Neurosurgery, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia., O'Donohoe TJ; Department of Neurosurgery, St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia [J Clin Neurosci] 2024 Nov 11; Vol. 130, pp. 110916. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Nov 11.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jocn.2024.110916
Abstrakt: Systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) require a comprehensive and reproducible strategy to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. This research-on-research study evaluated the methods used to assess research quality by SRs and MAs published in leading neurosurgical journals, and identified factors associated with the publication of a comprehensive and reproducible assessment. We systematically surveyed SRs published in the 10 leading neurosurgical journals between 01/11/2019 and 31/12/2021. PubMed was used to search the MEDLINE database, which was supplemented by individual journal searches. Included SRs were assessed using a standardised data extraction tool. Descriptive statistics were utilised to identify factors associated with methodological and reporting quality of the tool-based quality assessment. A total of 564 SRs were included in the analysis. 326 (57.80%) included MAs, 165 (29.26%) included at least one Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) and 29 (5.14%) included only RCTs. Scales were the most commonly used tool for methodological quality assessment (32.45%), followed by domain-based tools (24.82%) and checklists (9.93%). The number of included studies was inversely associated with multiple methodological quality assessment metrics. A positive association was observed between the number of included patients and multiple methodological quality assessment metrics. We established that the methodological and reporting quality of tool-based quality assessment requires improvement. This issue is particularly pertinent for SRs limited to non-randomised studies, which account for the vast majority of neurosurgical SRs. We recommend the use of domain-based tools for methodological quality assessment as these provide a more nuanced assessment of methodological quality.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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