Risk of bias tools in systematic reviews of health interventions: an analysis of PROSPERO-registered protocols.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Systematic reviews of health interventions are increasingly incorporating evidence outside of randomized controlled trials (RCT). While non-randomized study (NRS) types may be more prone to bias compared to RCT, the tools used to evaluate risk of bias (RoB) in NRS are less straightforward and no gold standard tool exists. The objective of this study was to evaluate the planned use of RoB tools in systematic reviews of health interventions, specifically for reviews that planned to incorporate evidence from RCT and/or NRS. METHODS:We evaluated a random sample of non-Cochrane protocols for systematic reviews of interventions registered in PROSPERO between January 1 and October 12, 2018. For each protocol, we extracted data on the types of studies to be included (RCT and/or NRS) as

SUBMITTER: Farrah K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6857304 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature