de Craen Anton J M, van Vliet Huib A A M, Helmerhorst Frans M
Department of General Internal Medicine, Leiden University Medical Center, PO Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands.
J Clin Epidemiol. 2005 Mar;58(3):311-3. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2004.07.002.
We investigated the frequency of quality assessment of randomized controlled trials within systematic reviews and the incorporation of the quality assessment in the analysis.
We included new systematic reviews of at least five trials of therapeutic or preventive interventions that appeared in issue 2, 2003, of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. All systematic reviews in the 2002 issues of the Annals of Internal Medicine, BMJ, JAMA, and Lancet were identified in Pubmed. All reviews were assessed under unblinded conditions using preprinted extraction forms.
Trial quality was assessed in all Cochrane reviews and most (74%) of the paper reviews. When we excluded 11 paper reviews that were also published as Cochrane review, the percentage remained similar (67%). Fifty percent of all Cochrane reviews and 61% of all paper reviews incorporated the results of the quality assessment in the analysis.
Half of the reviews did not incorporate the results of the quality assessment in the analysis. Authors, peer-reviewers, and editors should no longer focus exclusively on whether quality assessment has been performed but should also concentrate on incorporation of quality assessments in the analysis of the systematic review.
我们调查了系统评价中随机对照试验的质量评估频率以及质量评估在分析中的纳入情况。
我们纳入了2003年第2期《Cochrane系统评价数据库》中至少包含五项治疗性或预防性干预试验的新系统评价。通过PubMed检索了《内科学年鉴》《英国医学杂志》《美国医学会杂志》和《柳叶刀》2002年各期的所有系统评价。所有评价均使用预先印制的提取表格在非盲态条件下进行评估。
所有Cochrane评价以及大多数（74%）的纸质评价都对试验质量进行了评估。当我们排除11篇也作为Cochrane评价发表的纸质评价后，该百分比仍相似（67%）。所有Cochrane评价的50%以及所有纸质评价的61%在分析中纳入了质量评估结果。
一半的评价在分析中未纳入质量评估结果。作者、同行评审人员和编辑不应再仅仅关注是否进行了质量评估，还应专注于将质量评估纳入系统评价的分析中。
