TY - JOUR
T1 - Systematic reviews and meta-analyses in regional anesthesia and pain medicine (Part I)
T2 - guidelines for preparing the review protocol
AU - Barrington, Michael J.
AU - D'Souza, Ryan S.
AU - Mascha, Edward J.
AU - Narouze, Samer
AU - Kelley, George A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© American Society of Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine 2023. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Comprehensive resources exist on how to plan a systematic review and meta-analysis. The objective of this article is to provide guidance to authors preparing their systematic review protocol in the fields of regional anesthesia and pain medicine. The focus is on systematic reviews of healthcare interventions, with or without an aggregate data meta-analysis. We describe and discuss elements of the systematic review methodology that review authors should prespecify, plan, and document in their protocol before commencing the review. Importantly, authors should explain their rationale for planning their systematic review and describe the PICO framework - participants (P), interventions (I),comparators (C), outcomes (O) - and related elements central to constructing their clinical question, framing an informative review title, determining the scope of the review, designing the search strategy, specifying the eligibility criteria, and identifying potential sources of heterogeneity. We highlight the importance of authors defining and prioritizing the primary outcome, defining eligibility criteria for selecting studies, and documenting sources of information and search strategies. The review protocol should also document methods used to evaluate risk of bias, quality (certainty) of the evidence, and heterogeneity of results. Furthermore, the authors should describe their plans for managing key data elements, the statistical construct used to estimate the intervention effect, methods of evidence synthesis and meta-analysis, and conditions when meta-analysis may not be possible, including the provision of practical solutions. Authors should provide enough detail in their protocol so that the readers could conduct the study themselves.
AB - Comprehensive resources exist on how to plan a systematic review and meta-analysis. The objective of this article is to provide guidance to authors preparing their systematic review protocol in the fields of regional anesthesia and pain medicine. The focus is on systematic reviews of healthcare interventions, with or without an aggregate data meta-analysis. We describe and discuss elements of the systematic review methodology that review authors should prespecify, plan, and document in their protocol before commencing the review. Importantly, authors should explain their rationale for planning their systematic review and describe the PICO framework - participants (P), interventions (I),comparators (C), outcomes (O) - and related elements central to constructing their clinical question, framing an informative review title, determining the scope of the review, designing the search strategy, specifying the eligibility criteria, and identifying potential sources of heterogeneity. We highlight the importance of authors defining and prioritizing the primary outcome, defining eligibility criteria for selecting studies, and documenting sources of information and search strategies. The review protocol should also document methods used to evaluate risk of bias, quality (certainty) of the evidence, and heterogeneity of results. Furthermore, the authors should describe their plans for managing key data elements, the statistical construct used to estimate the intervention effect, methods of evidence synthesis and meta-analysis, and conditions when meta-analysis may not be possible, including the provision of practical solutions. Authors should provide enough detail in their protocol so that the readers could conduct the study themselves.
KW - Anesthesia, Local
KW - EDUCATION
KW - TECHNOLOGY
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U2 - 10.1136/rapm-2023-104801
DO - 10.1136/rapm-2023-104801
M3 - Article
C2 - 37945065
AN - SCOPUS:85178065742
SN - 1098-7339
JO - Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
JF - Regional anesthesia and pain medicine
M1 - 104801
ER -