Quality Assessment of Systematic Reviews of Health Care Interventions using AMSTAR.

ABSTRACT

Appraisal of the methodological quality of systematic reviews would reflect on their utility for the clinicians and policymakers. This study was done to assess the quality of systematic reviews published in five leading Indian medical journals using AMSTAR. 22 systematic reviews of healthcare interventions were identified. The scores ranged 0 to 10 (mean 3.77 and median 2.5), 9 reviews scored > 4/11. Most frequent ‘yes’ and ‘no’ scores were publication status as an inclusion criterion (12 / 22), respectively and duplicate study selection and data extraction (17 /22). Several suboptimal aspects of methodological quality were identified in the reviews evaluated.