Background: Systematic reviews (SRs) have become increasingly important for informing clinical practice; however, little is known about the reporting characteristics and the quality of the SRs relevant to the practice of rehabilitation health professionals.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the reporting quality of a representative sample of published SRs on rehabilitation, focusing on the descriptive, reporting, and bias-related characteristics.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted by searching MEDLINE for aggregative and configurative SRs indexed in 2011 that focused on rehabilitation as restorative of functional limitations. Two reviewers independently screened and selected the SRs and extracted data using a 38-item data collection form derived from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The data were analyzed descriptively.
Results: Eighty-eight SRs published in 59 journals were sampled. The median compliance with the PRISMA items was 17 (63%) out of 27 items (interquartile ratio=13-22 [48%-82%]). Two thirds of the SRs (n=66) focused on interventions for which efficacy is best addressed through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design, and almost all of these SRs included RCTs (63/66 [95%]). More than two thirds of the SRs assessed the quality of primary studies (74/88 [84%]). Twenty-eight reviews (28/88 [32%]) meta-analyzed the results for at least one outcome. One half of the SRs reported positive statistically significant findings (46%), whereas a detrimental result was present only in one review.
Conclusions: This sample of SRs in the rehabilitation field showed heterogeneous characteristics and a moderate quality of reporting. Poor control of potential source of bias might be improved if more widely agreed-upon evidence-based reporting guidelines will be actively endorsed and adhered to by authors and journals.