Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses in Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (Part I): Guidelines for Preparing the Review Protocol
Recommendations
As issued by the authors
Explain the rationale for the review and describe the PICO framework (participants, interventions, comparators, outcomes) and related elements to construct the question, title, scope, search strategy, eligibility criteria and sources of heterogeneity
Define and prioritise the primary outcome, define eligibility criteria for selecting studies, and document sources of information and search strategies
Document methods to evaluate risk of bias, quality (certainty) of the evidence, and heterogeneity of results
Describe plans for managing key data elements, the statistical construct to estimate the intervention effect, methods of evidence synthesis and meta-analysis, and conditions when meta-analysis may not be possible, with practical solutions
Provide enough detail in the protocol so that readers could conduct the study themselves
Original publication
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