An Introduction to Systematic Reviews

Shakila ThangaratinamProfessor of Maternal and Perinatal HealthWomen’s Health Research Unit

R & D Director of Women’s HealthBarts Health NHS Trust

Systematic reviewSystematic review

• What is it?

Traditional reviews

• Search and acquisition of evidence not clear

• Personal interests of the authors• Reliability issues

What is a systematic review?

• Systematic undertaking of a review with a focused research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesise all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. 

Systematic reviewsSystematic reviews

• What is it?

• Why do we need it?

Why do we need Systematic reviews

Why do we need Systematic reviews

• New evidence changes patient management • Delay in implementation can harm patient.• It is difficult to get evidence when it is needed• Knowledge and clinical performance

deteriorates with time without an attempt to keep up-to-date

• Traditional continuing education programs do not improve clinical performance

• EBM keeps its practitioners up-to date

Why do systematic reviews?

• Support Evidence Based Practice• Research• Inform clinical policy• Publication• Personal professional development

Systematic reviews

Yes

Good quality reviews

Poor quality reviews

No

Primary studies

Yes

Poor quality study

Good quality study

No

Review of reviews

Conduct Systematic reviews

Design and conduct primary study

Survey of practice

EBM

Systematic reviewsSystematic reviews

• What is it?

• Why do we need it?

• How to do them?

How to do systematic reviews?

Formulate clear clinical questions from our knowledge needs

Search the literature to identify relevant articles

Critically appraise the evidence for its validity and usefulness

Synthesise evidence

Workshop Objectives

• Aim: Familiarisation with Systematic reviews

• Objectives:– Literature Retrieval– Critical Appraisal of:

• Therapy and Diagnosis• Primary studies and Systematic Reviews

– Use of clinically meaningful statistics

The systematic review process

Formulate research /

policy conclusions

Search bibliographi

c databases

Identify possible papers

from titles/abstracts

Retrieve papers

Extract data

Further selection of

primary studies using inclusion

criteria

Synthesi

s

Formulate

research question

Design search

strategy

Quality

appraisal