Methodological and Reporting Quality of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses in Endodontics

Critical appraisal of methodological quality of Systematic Reviews and Meta‐analysis in Paediatric Dentistry journals

“…The overall score for quality of the SRs published in the area of paediatric dentistry (7.08 from 24 studies) was very similar to those reviewed in the area of Endodontics; 7.25 and 7.13 . Kattan et al analysed 36 studies which also included Cochrane reviews published in Endodontics between years 2009 and 2016 and found that the overall quality of SRs was medium.…”

“…In addition, this provides an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications. Google Scholar Metrics has previously been used as a platform to identify journals . In this review, we obtained a total of nine journals and based on the h‐5 index rating, four journals were excluded, namely Journal of Dentistry for Children (JDC), International Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry (JCPD), Journal of the Korean Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (JKAPD), and Pediatric Dental Journal (PDJ).…”

“…Kattan et al analysed 36 studies which also included Cochrane reviews published in Endodontics between years 2009 and 2016 and found that the overall quality of SRs was medium. In a more recent study, Nagendrababu et al evaluated 30 articles published between 2000 and 2017 and reported a similar outcome, including using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐Analyses (PRISMA) tool. A study that looked into Cochrane and non‐Cochrane SRs published in Orthodontics between 2002 and 2013 reported a relatively lower mean AMSTAR score of 6.20 …”

“…The current study showed that having at least six authors significantly improved the quality of reviews when compared to three authors and fewer. However, this trend was not observed in the orthodontics and endodontics . Conducting a SR requires an optimum pool of authors who serve various roles including study selection, extraction and analysis of the selected articles .…”

“…We attempted to consider only mainstream Paediatric Dentistry journals and hence might not have covered all the SRs under the umbrella of “Paediatric Dentistry”, for example those published in journals that were less specialized in scope. This approach, including only top journals in methodological reviews, is a common one and has been employed earlier in Medicine as well as Dentistry in the areas of Orthodontics and Endodontics . Hence, in this study, we achieved our aim of identifying the issues relating to the quality of SRs and MA and framing recommendations based on the results.…”