Critically appraising systematic reviews
1. What are the review’s objectives? To focus on well-defined questions, stating the populations, intervention/control groups, and outcomes to be included. 2. How comprehensive was the search strategy? To search for all the literature relevant to the question. Published and unpublished literature should be sought, any restrictions regarding language of publication should be stated and justified, as should the time period covered by the search. Ideally a systematic review needs to be up to date, incorporating all the recent literature.
How to produce a Systematic Review?
How is a systematic review conducted?
First step: to specify a tight question. population (group to whom the intervention will apply), intervention (the therapy, treatment or preventive policy to be carried out), comparison (what will the intervention be compared against – it could be a common alternative intervention, a placebo or no intervention) and outcomes (what do we wish to measure at the end, what is important to us and to consumers?).