Littlewood Chris, Ashton Jon, Chance-Larsen Ken, May Stephen, Sturrock Ben
University of Sheffield, UK.
J Man Manip Ther. 2012 Aug;20(3):130-4. doi: 10.1179/2042618611Y.0000000013.
The systematic review has become an increasingly popular method of synthesizing findings on a topic in order to inform clinical practice, commissioning of care, and future research. A central component of the systematic review is an assessment of study quality or risk of bias, i.e. an assessment of how near to the 'truth' the findings of the study are. While undertaking a recent systematic review, it became apparent that the outcomes of the quality appraisal process were somewhat different across systematic reviews where the same randomized controlled trials had been included. The quality of the report writing of the randomized controlled trials included was identified as one possible reason for this discrepancy. This had implications upon the conclusions drawn by the review. It is suggested that reasonable attempts to contact study authors should be made in order to inform the quality appraisal process while undertaking systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials and that the presence or absence of this process should be considered by research consumers when appraising the quality of a systematic review. This process enables a full assessment of study quality rather than simply an assessment of the quality of report writing.
系统评价已成为一种越来越流行的综合某一主题研究结果的方法，以便为临床实践、医疗保健委托和未来研究提供信息。系统评价的一个核心组成部分是对研究质量或偏倚风险的评估，即评估研究结果与“真相”的接近程度。在进行最近的一项系统评价时，很明显，在纳入相同随机对照试验的不同系统评价中，质量评估过程的结果有所不同。所纳入随机对照试验的报告撰写质量被确定为造成这种差异的一个可能原因。这对评价得出的结论有影响。建议在对随机对照试验进行系统评价时，应合理尝试联系研究作者，以便为质量评估过程提供信息，研究使用者在评估系统评价的质量时应考虑这一过程是否存在。这一过程能够对研究质量进行全面评估，而不仅仅是对报告撰写质量进行评估。
