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Review
. 2019 Jul 15;19(1):148.
doi: 10.1186/s12874-019-0798-5.

Assessment of the abstract reporting of systematic reviews of dose-response meta-analysis: a literature survey

Peng-Li Jia  1 , Bin Xu  2 , Jing-Min Cheng  3 , Xi-Hao Huang  4 , Joey S W Kwong  5 , Yu Liu  6 , Chao Zhang  7 , Ying Han  8 , Chang Xu  9
Affiliations
Review

Assessment of the abstract reporting of systematic reviews of dose-response meta-analysis: a literature survey

Peng-Li Jia et al. BMC Med Res Methodol. .

Abstract

Background: There is an increasing number of published systematic reviews (SR) of dose-response meta-analyses (DRMAs) over the past decades. However, the quality of abstract reporting of these SR-DRMAs remains to be understood. We conducted a literature survey to investigate the abstract reporting of SR-DRMAs.

Methods: Medline, Embase, and Wiley online Library were searched for eligible SR-DRMAs. The reporting quality of SR-DRMAs was assessed by the modified PRISMA-for-Abstract checklist (14 items). We summarized the adherence rate of each item and categorized them as well complied (adhered by 80% or above), moderately complied (50 to 79%), and poorly complied (less than 50%). We used total score to reflect the abstract quality and regression analysis was employed to explore the potential influence factors for it.

Results: We included 529 SR-DRMAs. Eight of 14 items were moderately (3 items) or poorly complied (5 items) while only 6 were well complied by these SR-DRMAs. Most of the SR-DRMAs failed to describe the methods for risk of bias assessment (30.2, 95% CI: 26.4, 34.4%) and the results of bias assessment (48.8, 95% CI: 44.4, 53.1%). Few SR-DRMAs reported the funding (2.3, 95% CI: 1.2, 3.9%) and registration (0.6, 95% CI: 0.1, 1.6%) information in the abstract. Multivariable regression analysis suggested word number of abstracts [> 250 vs. ≤ 250 (estimated ß = 0.31; 95% CI: 0.02, 0.61; P = 0.039)] was positively associated with the abstract reporting quality.

Conclusion: The abstract reporting of SR-DRMAs is suboptimal, substantial effort is needed to improve the reporting. More word number may benefit for the abstract reporting. Given that reporting of abstract largely depends on the reporting and conduct of the SR-DRMA, review authors should also focus on the completeness of SR-DRMA itself.

Keywords: Abstract reporting; Dose-response meta-analysis; Literature survey; Systematic review.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The flow chart of literature screen
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The adherence rate of single item of the abstract. Adherence rate indicates the proportion of SR-DRMAs meet the requirement of the item
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The distribution of total quality score. X-axis is the total quality score and the Y-axis is the number of SR-DRMAs under the quality score
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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