Sarah Khan edited untitled.tex  almost 9 years ago

Commit id: b7e3f6bad2282197b4239701c4d2cdd0d72f51fd

deletions | additions      

       

In assessing risk of bias, high/medium/low scale was used most commonly (19\%, n=11/58) followed by high/medium/unclear (14\%, n=8/58), and quality was assessed through author created scales (29\%, n=17/58) and the Jadad scale (16\%, n=9/58) \ref{fig:FIGURE_5}. Low Quality or High risk of bias studies were found in 46 studies out of the 91 studies that assessed quality \ref{fig:FIGURE_5}. There were 37 studies in which it could not be determined whether Low  Quality measures were articulated largely in narrative format (47\%, n=43/91) or not at all (40\%, n=36/91) \ref{fig:FIGURE_6}. Additional forms of presentation included combinations of figures and narratives (4\%, n=4/91) \ref{fig:FIGURE_7}. \ref{fig:FIGURE_6}.  The combination of table and narrative was also used more than single formats of presentation (3\%, n=3/91) \ref{fig:FIGURE_7}. \section{Discussion/Conclusion}  This study provides a comprehensive and recent assessment of methodological quality and risk of bias assessment in journals associated with oncology. Our main findings were that comprehensive reporting of quality measures in systematic reviews and meta-analyses in major oncology journals was moderate to low, with actual assessment of methodological being present in 91 of the 182 articles (50\%), and inclusion of studies with high risk of bias or low quality present in 35 of the 46 or 76\% of studies. This is surprisingly high in comparison to similar studies assessing risk of bias evaluations such as in Hopewell et al., where 20\% of non-Cochrane reviews neglected to report methods used. In addition the inclusion of studies with high risk of bias or low quality was also an issue, with 76\% of studies with high risk of bias or low quality studies being included. This is comparable to the proportion of trials with high risk of bias included in previous studies where 75\% of trials contained one or more trials with high risk of bias \cite{hopewell2013incorporation}. Of course Hopewell et al. used the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, which is known for its stringent criteria for methodological quality. Our study also focused only on oncology journals while the Hopewell et al. study focused on Cochrane and non-cochrane reviews across many fields.