Systematic Reviews in Neonatal Respiratory Care: Are Some Conclusions Misleading?
Date
2020
Type:
Article
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Abstract
An increasing amount of information is currently available in neonatal respiratory care.
Systematic reviews are an important tool for clinical decision-making. The challenge is to
combine studies that address a specific clinical question and have similar characteristics
in terms of populations, interventions, comparators, and outcomes, so that their combined results provide a more precise estimate of the effect that can be validly extrapolated into clinical practice. The concept of heterogeneity is reviewed, emphasizing that it should be considered in a wider perspective and not just as a mere statistical test. A case is made of how well-designed studies of the neonatal respiratory literature, when equivocally combined, can provide very precise but potentially biased results. Systematic reviews in this field and others should be rigorously peer-reviewed before publication to avoid misleading readers to potentially biased conclusions.
Description
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Citation
Maturana A, Moya F and Donn SM (2020) Systematic Reviews in Neonatal Respiratory Care: Are Some Conclusions Misleading? Front. Pediatr. 8:7.
Keywords
Neonatal respiratory care, Meta-analysis, Systematic reviews, Clinical decision-making, Infant-newborn