An AMSTAR assessment of the methodological quality of systematic reviews of oral healthcare interventions published in the Journal of Applied Oral Science (JAOS)

Abstract

BackgroundSystematic reviews are not an assembly of anecdotes but a distillation of current best available evidence on a particular topic and as such have an important role to play in evidence-based healthcare. A substantial proportion of these systematic reviews focus on interventions, and are able to provide clinicians with the opportunity to understand and translate the best available evidence on the effects of these healthcare interventions into clinical practice. The importance of systematic reviews in summarising and identifying the gaps in evidence which might inform new research initiatives is also widely acknowledged. Their potential impact on practice and research makes their methodological quality especially important as it may directly influence their utility for clinicians, patients and policy makers. The objectives of this study were to identify systematic reviews of oral healthcare interventions published in the Journal of Applied Oral Science (JAOS) and to evaluate their methodological quality using the evaluation tool, AMSTAR. MethodsPotentially eligible systematic reviews in JAOS were identified through an electronic search of the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO). Details of the relevant aspects of methodology as reported in these systematic reviews were extracted from the full text publications. Methodological quality was assessed independently by two reviewers using the AMSTAR questionnaire. ResultsFive systematic reviews were identified, one of which was subsequently excluded as it was a review of a diagnostic test. Summary AMSTAR scores for the four included reviews were: 1, 5, 2 and 4 out of a maximum score of 11 (range 1-5, mean 3) with only one of the reviews scoring 5. ConclusionAMSTAR evaluation of the methodological quality of the relatively small number of systematic reviews published in JAOS illustrated that there was room for improvement. Pre-publication and editorial appraisal of future systematic reviews might benefit from the application of tools such as AMSTAR and is to be recommended.

Reliability and validity of MINCIR scale for methodological quality in dental therapy research

“…Unfortunately, in dentistry 4,5,8 and other biomedical sciences, 6 many published research articles would be considered to have a low LoE. However, LoEs provide an incomplete picture since studies that have the same LoE nominally, may differ in essential methodological aspects (e.g.…”

“…This characteristic is an important advantage considering that clinical trials represent a minor portion of research articles in dentistry. 4,5,8 An additional advantage of the MINCIR scale is that it enables one to perform systematic reviews of clinical trials, cohort studies, case-control, and case series studies. 11 The MINCIR scale has been used to assess surgical studies, 6 including studies in the areas of oral and maxillofacial surgery, 8 and has demonstrated psychometric properties.…”

“…3 Unfortunately, evaluation instruments for dentistry research are scarce and most that are available are limited to specific specialties, geographic areas, or research designs. 4,5 Evaluation methods that cover diverse dental therapies have the potential to provide relevant information to clinicians and improve dental practice.…”

Methodological quality assessment of paper-based systematic reviews published in oral health

“…The three least common topics were restorative dentistry (n=15; 2.3 %), pain (n=11; 1.7 %), and other unclassified studies (n=25; 3.9 %). Although the median number of studies per SR was [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], the majority (70.2 %, n=450) included fewer than 24 studies in their review, while 2.0 % (n=13) included more than 100 studies. Most studies failed to describe study characteristics (88.2 %, n = 567), with terms such as Badults^(6.5 %, n = 42) or Bpaediatrics^(5.3 %, n = 34) populations used sparingly among the studies.…”

A Systematic Review of Hepatitis Virus Review Studies: A Case of Health Economic Evaluation Analysis

“…For appraising the quality of reviews in this studies, we discussed to give the conditions that the reviews should meet for each question in AMSTAR checklist. To understand the meaning of the AMSTAR question [35] clearly and how to score a review, we consulted correlative reports [35,[41][42][43].…”