Systematic reviews
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The prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in children and adolescents is increasing. This has spurred the development and publication of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for the management of paediatric T2DM. Given the long-term complications of T2DM, optimal management is important to prevent or delay these complications. However, the quality of published CPGs has not yet been empirically evaluated. Our objective is to systematically appraise all published CPGs for the management of T2DM in children and adolescents. ⋯ PROSPERO CRD42016034187.
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Review
Rethinking the assessment of risk of bias due to selective reporting: a cross-sectional study.
Selective reporting is included as a core domain of Cochrane's tool for assessing risk of bias in randomised trials. There has been no evaluation of review authors' use of this domain. We aimed to evaluate assessments of selective reporting in a cross-section of Cochrane reviews and to outline areas for improvement. ⋯ Our audit of user practice in Cochrane reviews suggests that the assessment of selective reporting in the current risk of bias tool does not work well. It is not always clear which outcomes were selectively reported or what the corresponding risk of bias is in the synthesis with missing outcome data. New tools that will make it easier for reviewers to convey this information are being developed.
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Cochrane Child Health maintains a register of child-relevant Cochrane systematic reviews (SRs) to provide a comprehensive source of high-quality evidence. However, a large number of SRs are published outside of The Cochrane Collaboration (Cochrane), impacting the comprehensiveness of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR). We surveyed authors who published child-relevant SRs with Cochrane and elsewhere in the medical literature to (1) understand their experiences in preparing and publishing SRs and (2) identify factors influencing choice of publication venue. ⋯ Key reasons for publishing in Cochrane are its positive reputation and impact factor. Reasons for publishing in non-Cochrane sources include lack of familiarity or challenges with the Cochrane processes and desire to publish in a source more directly relevant to the topic of interest. End users looking for evidence in the form of SRs need to be aware that there is a vast number of SRs published across the medical literature. Efforts to optimize the identification of SRs in non-Cochrane sources (e.g., through effective labeling or protocol/review registration) and their content will help end users find the necessary synthesized evidence to support clinical practice.
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The extracorporeal membrane carbon dioxide removal (ECCO2R) system is primarily designed for the purpose of removing CO2 from the body for patients with potentially reversible severe acute hypercapnic respiratory failure or being considered for lung transplantation. Systematic reviews have focused on the effectiveness of ECCO2R. To the author's best knowledge, this is the first systematic review to focus on the adverse effects of this procedure. ⋯ PROSPERO CRD42015023503 .
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The term "health literacy" (HL) was first coined in 1974, and its most common definition is currently defined as a person's ability to access, understand, evaluate, communicate, and use health information to make decisions for one's health. The previous systematic reviews assessing the effect of existing HL measurement tools on health outcomes have simply searched for the term "health literacy" only to identify measures instead of incorporating either one or more of the five domains in their search. Furthermore, as the domain "use" is fairly new, few studies have actually assessed this domain. In this protocol, we propose to identify and assess HL measures that applied the mentioned five domains either collectively or individually in assessing chronic disease management, in particular for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The ultimate goal is to provide recommendations towards the development and validation of a patient-centric HL measurement tool for the two diseases. ⋯ PROSPERO CRD42016037532.