Meta-Analyses in Joint Arthroplasty: A Review of Quantity, Quality, and Impact

Strategies to improve the credibility of meta-analyses in spine surgery: a systematic survey

“…Similar findings were reported by Sharma et al [5] in their evaluation of 77 total joint arthroplasty meta-analyses and Kowalczuk et al [6] in their evaluation of 22 femoroacetabular impingement meta-analyses. Each of these studies suggested that adherence to standardized checklists could potentially assist peer reviewers and journal editors, but none proposed strategies to improve future studies, none evaluated credibility according to the Users' Guide, and none systematically examined the spine literature.…”

“…We hypothesized a priori that each of publication year, Journal Impact Factor, Science Citation Index, the inclusion of randomized controlled trials, the inclusion of unpublished studies, the inclusion of studies in languages other than English, the searching of multiple databases, the presence of an author with a degree or affiliation in epidemiology or biostatistics would be positively associated with credibility and completeness of reporting [3,5,28]. Given earlier research that demonstrated industry-funded studies are more likely to describe positive findings and more likely to report subgroup analyses that have lesser credibility, we also included an a priori hypothesis that industry funding could have a negative association [29][30][31][32].…”

“…Investigators have previously identified limitations in the conduct and reporting of meta-analyses in other surgical subspecialties [3][4][5][6][7]. In neurosurgery, Klimo et al [83] used the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews instrument and PRISMA and identified major deficiencies in search strategies, study selection, data extraction, and assessments of heterogeneity, publication bias, and study quality in 72 meta-analyses.…”

“…Along with transparent reporting, high methodological credibility is necessary to avoid misleading conclusions. Flawed meta-analyses are at risk of compromising clinical decision making, and limitations have been documented in a variety of other surgical and medical specialties [3][4][5][6][7].…”

Reporting and Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews in the Orthopaedic Literature

“…In that study, the researchers collected 110 reviews from fifteen orthopaedic journals during the year 2000. More specifically, in another study, only 29% of the reviews concerning joint arthroplasty were considered high quality on the PRISMA checklist 24 ; the study identified seventy-seven reviews from 1993 to 2009. Although we did not rate each individual study on a scale of quality in the present study, our results suggest that the quality is similar to that found in previous reports.…”