The TRIP database showed most acute respiratory infections questions were already addressed by Cochrane reviews

Abstract

Objectives: Cochrane systematic reviews require more methodological support from Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) than is customarily received by authors from journals; CRGs must therefore prioritize reviews to conserve resources. The TRIP database provided a data set of questions to guide prioritization for the acute respiratory infections (ARIs) CRG.

Study design and setting: We extracted the ARI searches from the TRIP database (2010 to 2017) that contained at least one disease and one clinical management term, (defined as a "search"), and tabulated these by frequency.

Results: There were 314,346 ARI searches from which we inferred 45,497 clinical questions, covering 365 topics. Two-thirds (30,541) of these addressed 20 clinical questions, of which treatment were the most frequent, followed by diagnosis, mortality, and prognosis. The five most frequent clinical questions were "Influenza + Vaccination" 4,989 (12.1%), "acute otitis media + antibiotics" 3,578 (8.7%), "common cold + vitamin C" 3,528 (8.6%), "meningitis + corticosteroids" 1,910 (4.6%), and "pneumonia + general treatment" 1,765 (4.3%). The 20 most frequent clinical questions were addressed by Cochrane reviews or protocols.

Conclusion: ARI questions are common and repeated often. Most may have been addressed by Cochrane reviews. The remainder form the basis of a priority list to assign resources for future Cochrane topics.

Keywords: Acute respiratory infections; Clinical questions; Cochrane; Database analysis; Health priorities; Research prioritization.