systematic review

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a rigorous, transparent, and reproducible synthesis of research evidence addressing a clearly defined question, using pre-specified methods to identify, select, critically appraise, and summarise all relevant studies; systematic reviews are distinguished from narrative reviews by their adherence to pre-registered protocol, comprehensive search of multiple databases, explicit inclusion and exclusion criteria, formal quality assessment of included studies, and systematic data extraction and synthesis; the methodology was developed to overcome the biases and inconsistencies of expert-driven narrative reviews, which tended to selectively cite studies confirming the reviewer's prior beliefs; the Cochrane Collaboration, founded in 1993, established global standards for systematic review in healthcare and publishes a library of regularly updated systematic reviews; systematic reviews with meta-analysis represent the highest level of the evidence hierarchy for questions about intervention effectiveness

Examples

• A Cochrane systematic review of 120 trials found strong evidence that hand hygiene interventions reduce gastroenteritis transmission in community settings.
• Pre-registration of the systematic review protocol prevented selective reporting of analysis choices after the results were known.