Analysis of reporting of systematic reviews in physical therapy published in Portuguese

Abstract

Background: Systematic reviews are considered the best design to synthesize all existing information of a given research topic. To date, there is no study that investigated the quality of reporting of systematic reviews relevant to physical therapy published in Portuguese.

Objective: To analyse the quality of reporting of systematic reviews in the field of physical therapy published in Portuguese by using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) checklist.

Method: All systematic reviews published in Portuguese that were indexed on PEDro database up to August 2011 were included. The quality of reporting of the eligible papers was analysed by using the PRISMA checklist. Each quality assessment was performed by two independent reviewers with arbitration of a third reviewer if necessary.

Results: A total of 37 systematic reviews were identified. These studies were published between 2003 and 2010. Less than 30% of the PRISMA checklist items were satisfied, being most of the items related to the introduction and discussion sections. No improvements over time were observed.

Conclusions: Most of the studies did not satisfy the items from the PRISMA Checklist. It seems that most of authors did not know the existence of this checklist. The implementation of reporting statements such as the PRISMA statement by Portuguese-written journals is likely to help authors to write their systematic reviews in a more transparent and clear way.