A transdisciplinary team approach to scoping reviews: the case of pediatric polypharmacy

Abstract

BackgroundPolypharmacy can be either beneficial or harmful to children. We conducted a scoping review to examine the concept of pediatric polypharmacy: its definition, prevalence, extent and gaps in research. In this manuscript, we report our transdisciplinary scoping review methodology.MethodsAfter establishing a transdisciplinary team, we iteratively developed standard operating procedures for the study’s search strategy, inclusion/exclusion criteria, screening, and data extraction. We searched eight bibliographic databases, screened abstracts and full text articles, and extracted data from included studies using standardized forms. We held regular team meetings and performed ongoing internal validity measurements to maintain consistent and quality outputs.ResultsWith the aid of EPPI Reviewer collaborative software, our transdisciplinary team of nine members performed dual reviews of 363 included studies after dual screening of 4398 abstracts and 1082 full text articles. We achieved overall agreement of 85% and a kappa coefficient of 0.71 (95% CI 0.68–0.74) while screening full text articles. The screening and review processes required about seven hours per extracted study. The two pharmacists, an epidemiologist, a neurologist, and a librarian on the review team provided internal consultation in these key disciplines. A stakeholder group of 10 members with expertise in evidence synthesis, research implementation, pediatrics, mental health, epilepsy, pharmacoepidemiology, and pharmaceutical outcomes were periodically consulted to further characterize pediatric polypharmacy.ConclusionsA transdisciplinary approach to scoping reviews, including internal and external consultation, should be considered when addressing complex cross-disciplinary questions.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-018-0560-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Variation of the prevalence of pediatric polypharmacy: A scoping review

“…We found that children had higher prevalence of all‐drug polypharmacy than adolescents, but upon stratification on medication category, our findings were consistent with those of researchers who have demonstrated higher prevalence of psychotropic polypharmacy among adolescents groups . The overall median average number of medications also supports this as children under 12 years had a higher median of the mean number of medications than adolescents.…”

“…We briefly describe the methods of our study, details of which have been published . The framework for this scoping review was based on the design by Arksey and O'Malley with enhancements from others .…”

“…We briefly describe the methods of our study, details of which have been published. 16 The framework for this scoping review was based on the design by Arksey and O'Malley with enhancements from others. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] A scoping review is a knowledge synthesis approach that addresses an exploratory research question to establish key concepts, types of evidence, and gaps in research related to a field.…”

Defining pediatric polypharmacy: A scoping review

“…The methodology included articulating the research question; identifying relevant studies; selecting qualifying studies; extracting relevant information; collating and summarizing the information; and consulting experts in the field. Our detailed methodology is available in the protocol at the journal website (S1 File) and in our methods manuscript[52]. We briefly outline the methods below.…”

A Scoping Review of Medications Studied in Pediatric Polypharmacy Research

“…A scoping review is a type of knowledge synthesis that addresses an exploratory research question to establish key concepts, types of evidence, and gaps in research related to a field [28]. After specifying the research question, we searched for potentially relevant studies, selected qualifying studies, extracted relevant information, summarized and analyzed the information [34,35].…”