Quality Assessment Of Systematic Reviews Or Meta-Analyses Published By Progress In Obstetrics And Gynecology

ObjectivesTo improve the methodological and reporting quality of systematic reviews (SR)or Meta-analysis (MA) published by Progress in Obstetrics and Gynecology.MethodsAppropriate articles met the requirements were selected according to the standards made from SR/MA articles published by this magazine from year 1989 to 2015. Basic literature information was collected, including unit type of first author, numbers of author and their units, published years, supporting fund, incorporated document names, selected articles numbers, quality evaluation criteria, subject classification, et al.11 items of methodological quality brought into the literature were evaluated by AMSTAR scale. Seven parts, totally 27 items, of reporting quality brought into the literature were evaluated by PRISMA scale. Every items in these scales above-mentioned was described with full report, part report and undescribed report, respectively, meter points 1,0.5 and 0. AMSTAR scale score 11 points, while PRISMA 27 points.After entered by software Excel, all data was analyzed statistically using software Stata. Basic literature information was described by frequency and constituent ratio. Five aspects of these methodological and reporting quality scales, referenced in the magazine, were analyzed hierarchically, including release date (AMSTAR scale with less than or equal 2007 or vs. greater than or equal 2008; PRISMA scale with less than or equal 2008 vs. greater than or equal 2009), author number (less than or equal 2 or more than or equal 3), supporting fund (with vs. without), author unit properties (hospital vs. university), unit quantity (1 vs. more than or equal 2).ResultsA total of 37 studies were included whose average score of AMSTAR was point 6.608±0.286 (2-9).8 studies (21.62%) were assessed as low quality (0-4 points), while 22 (59.46%) as medium quality (5-8 points) and 7 (18.92%) as high quality (9-11 points). Among AMSTAR scales, only two items report was assessed as complete (integrity 70% or higher). They were item 9 (integrity 91.89%) and item 6 (integrity 81.08%). Information missing were found in six items are reported. They were item 8 (48.65%), item 3 (40.54%) item 4 (24.32%), item 1 (2.70%), item 5 (0.00%) and item 11 (0.00%) which led to the drop of integrity (less than 50%).Average score of PRISMA was point 16.905±0.651(6.5-22.5). There were 10 studies (27.03%) whose reports had relatively serious information defects (less than or equal 15 point) and 22 studies (59.46%) had certain defects (-21 points). Only 5 studies (13.51%) were relatively complete (-27 points).13 items of report information were missing, while the rest 14 items were described better. The information missing items were item 2 (structured abstract,0.0%) item 3 (theory,48.65%), item 5 (scheme and registration,0.00%), item 7 (information sources, 45.95%), entry 8 (retrieval,24.32%), item 9 (select,40.54%) 10 (data extraction, 40.54%), item 11 (data item,40.54%), item 15 (bias,32.43%), item 16 (methods supplementary analysis,37.84%), item 17 (filter,29.73%), item 23 (results supplementary analysis,32.43%) and item 27 (supporting fund,0.00%).According to the results from stratification analysis, methodology quality of SR/MA improved significantly (P< 0.05) after the publish of AMSTAR scale, while funds had no significant effect (P> 0.05) on methodology quality of SR/MA. Although the AMSTAR score points of first author from university was higher than that from hospital, no statistical significance (P> 0.05) was observed. Same situation was found in that of author and unit number. Reporting quality of SR/MA from studies with 3 or more author number were significantly better than that with of 2 or less author number (P< 0.05); It trended to improve reporting quality of SR/MA that PRISMA was issued and first author came from the hospital and unit number was 1 and studies was supported by funds. But none of these had statistical significance (P> 0.05).ConclusionsArticles about SR/MA published by Progress in Obstetrics and Gynecology had some problems on methodological and reporting quality. The release of AMSTAR had made some improvement on methodological quality, but it remains to be improved. It should especially pay attention to preliminary design scheme, inclusion criteria and document retrieval, etc. It should be helpful to improve the SR/MA quality if PRISMA was applied reasonably.