Summary
Systematic reviews (SRs) are considered the gold‐standard for putting together evidence in healthcare. They serve clinicians and other stakeholders of the healthcare field, such as patients ...and policy makers, by summarizing the available data that we have on a medical subject, while highlighting the quality of the studies existing in the literature.
In literature from other medical specialties, the use of reporting guidelines, such as the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA), has been shown to increase transparency and reproducibility (the extent to which consistent results are obtained when an experiment is repeated).
To date, however, no studies have looked at how well dermatology SRs adhere to items from the PRISMA guideline, which is what the authors of this study, based in Canada, aimed to address. It is important that the methodology of systematic reviews is transparent and appropriately reported, so that readers have a clear understanding of what was done and why.
To do this, we reviewed all SRs published in the five dermatology journals with the highest impact factors from 2013 to 2017. We evaluated how well selected PRISMA items were reported and whether the adherence of reporting was associated with factors such as year of publication, protocol registration, and funding source.
We found that among SRs published in five dermatology journals from 2013‐17, all (136 of 136) had at least one inadequately reported PRISMA item, while 93% (127 of 136) had at least one fully non‐reported item. Reporting improved over time and SRs that stated they used a pre‐registered protocol were associated with better reporting of the PRISMA items we assessed.
Several items remain commonly under‐reported in dermatology systematic reviews and we identified these in the hopes that it improves reporting going forward.
With the results from this study, we feel that authors, reviewers, journal editors and editorial committees should strive to encourage pre‐registration of SR protocols and better SR reporting.
This is a summary of the study: Quality of reporting in systematic reviews published in dermatology journals
Linked Article: Croitoru et al. Br J Dermatol 2020; 182:1469–1476
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