Marshall, Gill and Sykes, Anne E. (2011) Systematic reviews: A guide for radiographers and other health care professionals. Radiography, 17 (2). pp. 158-164. Full text not available from this repository.
Abstract
This paper offers guidance on performing systematic reviews to help up-skill radiographers and other health care professionals. It considers why systematic review is critically important to Radiography. Using a relevant example i.e. to investigate adverse effects related to MRI contrast agents it then examines the features of a systematic review and explains how diagnostic research evidence within a systematic review is evaluated. The paper then discusses the threats to validity of systematic reviews on a step by step basis.
Five key steps are considered:
Step 1: define the purpose of the review via a well-structured question.
Step 2: determine the parameters (eligibility criteria) for a comprehensive systematic literature review that will address the research question. It is the wide range of material reviewed in this way that makes the work a systematic review, rather than an analysis of papers you happen to have.
Step 3: Assess the quality of the literature you have found. Generally peer-reviewed papers published on a database such as Medline, which in the example given was established as an eligibility criterion, are considered to be high quality, but the actual impact factor/SCOPUS score of each journal is variable and should be considered.
Step 4: Synthesise what the literature has revealed; appropriately extract data and summarise it; identifying any study differences. This requires the use of suitable methods for agreeing and summarising the results. This may involve a meta-analysis to collate the results from several studies.
Step 5: interpret the findings to draw inferences from the resulting review and from the results of a meta-analysis if undertaken.
This paper then provides a check list for guidance of those involved in writing systematic reviews and finally summarises the paper. A glossary of terms appears at the end of this paper.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Journal / Publication Title: | Radiography |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| ISSN: | 1078-8174 |
| Departments: | Academic Departments > Medical & Sport Sciences (MSS) > Health and Medical Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Insight Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Nov 2010 15:15 |
| Last Modified: | 12 Jan 2024 09:45 |
| URI: | https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/488 |
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