ResultsĀ
The flow chart of literature retrieval is presented in Figure
1 . Through searching the PubMed, Embase databases, and prior reviews,
our initial search yielded 206 articles, from which a total of 42
duplicate articles were removed. After screening the records, we
excluded 77 certain articles such as reviews. By reviewing the title and
abstract, 19 remaining studies were potentially available, and further
assessed under the full-text screenings. According to the pre-defined
inclusion and exclusion criteria, we subsequently excluded 7 studies
because (1) article is a meta-analysis (n=1)[16]; (2) studies did
not report the relevant outcomes (n=3)[17-19]; (3) studies did not
report the classification of polypharmacy (n=3) [20-22]. Finally, a
total of 12 studies were included in our meta-analysis[8-10, 15,
23-30].