Summary Guidelines for conducting Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis

Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis: Overview, need
and its importance in health care
 Definitions
• Systematic review : A systematic methods of identifying,
selecting and critically apprising available primary evidence
(often Randomised Controlled Trials) to address specific
welldefined research question
• Meta-analysis: A meta-synthesis is essentially a systematic
review that aims to combine quantitative data from multiple
primary studies to address a research question


 Overview of systematic review and meta-analysis
 Research question
 formulation Protocol development and registration
 Database search
 Study selection
 Quality assessment
 Data extraction
 Data analysis/Evidence synthesis
 Analysis and interpretation of results Dissemination




 Advantages of Systematic review and Meta-analysis
 Identifies source of heterogeneity
 Increases statistical power
 Reduces subjectivity
 Identifies data gaps Helpful when available literature
evidence is controversial


 Need and importance of systematic review and
meta-analysis
• Significant rise in scientific publication often with conflicting
findings having different quality