Systematic reviews in rehabilitation
Systematic reviews are valuable studies capable of synthesizing the available evidence on a given topic and providing unambiguous answers that are useful for everyday clinical practice. In addition, meta-analysis interpretation, often included within reviews, provides an accurate and definitive value about the efficacy of a treatment obtained by merging and weighing all included clinical trials.
In rehabilitation, conducting systematic reviews is essential for drafting up-to-date guidelines that align the clinician’s work with international research results.
The challenges of a review
Even if no Ethical Committee has to be consulted, no patient enrolled, and no follow-up period waited, conducting a systematic review is not that easy!
First, a robust search string must be developed, so researchers need proper knowledge of database functioning.
Then, you need to manage a large amount of data: dismissing duplicates, assessing study eligibility for each phase, and recording reasons for exclusion are only a few of the challenging passages that may be subject to data loss.
Finally, results must be synthesized with proper statistical skills and illustrated to the readers with an engaging narration style.
Time-saving software
I believe in the power of information sharing and the circulation of ideas among researchers.
For this reason, I gladly share some tools that I found particularly useful when I conducted scoping reviews.
- Rayyan is a free screening software that supports researchers during the inclusion-exclusion of the studies. The rigor of systematic reviews requires that the screening process (title/abstract and full text) be performed by at least two blind reviewers. When citations are uploaded, Rayyan keeps a record of each decision made by each researcher, along with the reasons for exclusion and the rate of disagreement. This tool is beneficial and time-saving when filling the PRISMA flow diagram, as almost all journals require.
- After selecting the papers, you need to conduct a critical appraisal to assess the risk of bias in each study. ROBVIS is a user-friendly app that creates risk-of-bias assessment summary tables in a few minutes, just like in Cochrane reviews!
Bonus tips
If you are a student or you don’t feel too comfortable with statistic computation, Statcheck is a free online tool that helps you catch errors by just uploading the paper in a PDF version. However, always use it with caution!
Finally, Johns Hopkins University offers a gripping free online course headed “Introduction to systematic review and meta-analysis”, with six weeks of lessons and materials to be studied step by step. I always recommend it to my students.
Scientific research can be challenging, fortunately, some tools can make our lives easier!
Feel free to share this post with other researchers you know, if you think it would be helpful to them.
Written by M. Chiara Bò, PT – MerloBioEngineering
