Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Oct 1;101(10):965-974.
doi: 10.1097/PHM.0000000000001933. Epub 2021 Dec 6.

Conducting a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis in Rehabilitation

Andrea D Furlan  1 , Emma Irvin
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Conducting a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis in Rehabilitation

Andrea D Furlan et al. Am J Phys Med Rehabil. .

Abstract

Systematic reviews are reviews of the literature using a step-by-step approach in a systematic way. Meta-analyses are systematic reviews that use statistical methods to combine the included studies to generate an effect estimate. In this article, we summarize 10 steps for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the field of rehabilitation medicine: protocol, review team and funding, objectives and research question, literature search, study selection, risk of bias, data extraction, data analysis, reporting of results and conclusions, and publication and dissemination. There are currently 64,958 trials that contain the word "rehabilitation" in CENTRAL (the database of clinical trials in the Cochrane Library), only 1246 reviews, and 237 protocols. There is an urgent need for rehabilitation physicians to engage and conduct systematic reviews and meta-analysis of a variety of rehabilitation interventions. Systematic reviews have become the foundation of clinical practice guidelines, health technology assessments, formulary inclusion decisions and to guide funding additional research in that area.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Financial disclosure statements have been obtained, and no conflicts of interest have been reported by the authors or by any individuals in control of the content of this article.

References

    1. The Cochrane: Cochrane. About us. c2021. Available at: https://www.cochrane.org/about-us . Accessed April 29, 2021
    1. Cochrane Rehabilitation: Cochrane Rehabilitation. About us. c2021. Available at: https://rehabilitation.cochrane.org/about-us . Accessed April 29, 2021
    1. Cochrane Rehabilitation: Compiling the best available evidence rapidly. COVID-19 case story. 2020. Available at: https://rehabilitation.cochrane.org/sites/rehabilitation.cochrane.org/fi... . Accessed April 29, 2021
    1. Whyte J, Dijkers MP, Fasoli SE, et al.: Recommendations for reporting on rehabilitation interventions. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2021;100:5–16
    1. Wang D, Taylor-Vaisey A, Negrini S, et al.: Criteria to evaluate the quality of outcome reporting in randomized controlled trials of rehabilitation interventions. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2021;100:17–28

LinkOut - more resources