Assessment of health equity consideration in Cochrane systematic reviews and primary studies on urolithiasis

Abstract

Background and Aims: Health injustice is defined as "unnecessary, preventable, unjustified and unfair health differences." One of the most important scientific sources on the prevention and management of urolithiasis are Cochrane reviews in this field. Given that the first step in eliminating health injustice is to identify the causes, the aim of the present study was to evaluate equity considerations in Cochrane reviews and the included primary studies on urinary stones.Methods: Cochrane reviews on kidney stones and ureteral stones were searched through the Cochrane Library. The included clinical trials in each of the reviews published after 2000 were also collected. Two different researchers reviewed all the included Cochrane reviews and primary studies. The researchers reviewed each PROGRESS criteria independently

Consideration of health inequity in systematic reviews and primary studies on risk factors for hearing loss

“…The proportion of primary studies set in LMICs in the present study was similar to that reported in Evans et al (38% and 37%, respectively) [22]. (As noted above, Tugwell et al reported no primary studies were set in LMICs [20]; Basirat et al reported "very few" studies were set in LMICs [21]). The proportion of studies conducted in LMICs in the present study can be considered low given that the age-standardized burden of moderate to severe hearing loss globally is higher in LMICs than high-income countries [32].…”

“…Our findings are similar to those of studies which investigate the reporting of health inequity in Cochrane reviews of clinical trials [20][21][22].…”

“…Basirat et al found that the only PROGRESS data reported in a sample of 12 Cochrane reviews published 2012-2022 on interventions for kidney stones related to gender (n = 2, 16.7%) and place of residence (n = 1, 8.3%) [21]. In contrast, in the 130 included primary studies, data related to these categories was reported more frequently (92.9% and 25% of studies, respectively).…”

“…Observational studies were analyzed separately to experimental studies. We separated the analysis for these study designs because equity reporting in experimental studies, specifically RCTs, has been previously documented, whereas there is no research on equity reporting in observational studies [20][21][22].…”

“…This may account for absence of reporting of health inequity data in some reviews. Although the sample size of SRs was small, it was sufficient to identify patterns in the reporting of health equity data in SRs and primary studies, and equivalent to similar studies on the reporting of health equity data in SRs [20][21][22]. The majority of primary studies in the sample were published post-2000 and the median date of publication was 2014, however, there were still a proportion of studies published pre-2000 which may have been less likely to include data on health inequities.…”