Systematic reviews & meta-analyses

Books

Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. Systematic Reviews: CRD’s guidance for undertaking reviews in health care. (free access to electronic version, free PDF download)

Egger, M, editor. Systematic reviews in health care: meta-analysis in context. 2nd edition. London: BMJ, 2001.

Higgins, JPT, Green, S, editors. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Chichester: Wiley, 2008.

Khan K, Kunz R, Kleijnen J, Antes G. Systematic reviews to support evidence-based medicine. 2nd edition. London: Royal Society of Medicine, 2011.

Light RJ, Pillemer DB. Summing up: the science of reviewing research. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1984.

Articles

Badgett RG, O'Keefe M, Henderson MC. Using Systematic Reviews in Clinical Education. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;126(11):886-9

Bero LA, Jadad AR. How Consumers and Policymakers Can Use Systematic Reviews for Decision Making. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;127(1):37-42

Cook DJ, Greengold NL, Ellrodt AG, Weingarten SR. The Relation between Systematic Reviews and Practice Guidelines. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;127(3):210-16

Cook DJ, Mulrow CD, Haynes RB. Systematic Reviews: Synthesis of Best Evidence for Clinical Decisions. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;126(5):376- 80

Egger M, Smith GD. Meta-analysis: Potentials and promise. BMJ. 1997;315:1371-74

Egger M, Smith GD, Philips AN. Meta-analysis: Principles and procedures. BMJ. 1997;315:1533-37

Egger M, Smith GD. Meta-analysis: Bias in location and selection of studies. BMJ. 1998;316:61-6

Gotzsche P, Hrobjartsson A, Marie K, Tendal B. Data Extraction Errors in Meta-analyses That Use Standardized Mean Differences. JAMA. 2007;298(4):430-437

Hunt DL, McKibbon KA. Locating and Appraising Systematic Reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;126(7):532-38

Lau J, Ioannidis PA, Schmid CH. Quantitative Synthesis in Systematic Reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;127(9):820-26

McQuay HJ, Moore RA. Using Numerical Results from Systematic Reviews in Clinical Practice. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;126(9):712-20

Mulrow CD, Cook DJ, Davidoff F. Systematic Reviews: Critical Links in the Great Chain of Evidence. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;126(5):389-91

Mulrow C, Langhorne P, Grimshaw J. Integrating Heterogeneous Pieces of Evidence in Systematic Reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997;127(11):989-995

Shojania KG, Sampson M, Ansari MT, Ji J, Doucette S, Moher D. How Quickly Do Systematic Reviews Go Out of Date? A Survival Analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2007;147:224-233.

Higgins, JPT, Green, S, editors. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Version 5.0.1 [updated September 2008].

Material for reviewers

Data analysis

Sutton AJ, Higgins JP. Recent developments in meta-analysis. Stat Med 2207 Jun 25; [Epub ahead of print].

Parmar MK, Torri V, Stewart L. Extracting summary statistics to perform meta-analyses of the published literature for survival endpoints. Stat Med 1998 Dec. 30;17(24):2815-34. Erratum in: Stat Med 2004 Jun 15;23(11):1817.

Searching

Egger M, Juni P, Bartlett C, Holenstein F, Sterne J. How important are comprehensive literature searches and the assessment of trial quality in systematic reviews? Empirical study. Health Technol Assess. 2003;7(1):1-76. Review. No abstract available. PMID: 12583822

Juni P, Holenstein F, Sterne J, Bartlett C, Egger M. Direction and impact of language bias in meta-analyses of controlled trials: empirical study. Int J Epidemiol. 2002 Feb;31(1):115-23

Grading

Juni P, Witschi A, Bloch R, Egger M. The hazards of scoring the quality of clinical trails for meta-analysis. JAMA. 1999 Sep 15;282(11):1054-60. PMID: 10493204

Juni P, Altman DG, Egger M. Systematic reviews in health care: Assessing the quality of controlled clinical trials. BMJ. 2001 Jul 7;323(7303):42-6. Review. No abstract available.

Meta-analyses of observational studies

Shapiro S. Meta-analysis/Shmeta-analysis. Am J Epidemiol. 1994 Nov 1;140(9):771-8. PMID: 7977286

Greenland S. Can Meta-analysis Be Salvaged? Am J Epidemiol. 1994 Nov. 1;140(9):783-7.

Online resources

Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

Cochrane Style Resource : official Cochrane style guide for copy-editing, etc.

Cochrane Diagnostic Test Accuracy Group

FAQ: Clinical Trial Results provided by the National Library of Medicine, USA)

Review production resources for authors & managing editors : includes explanation of procedures and permission form for re-publication of a Cochrane review in another journal, and more

RevMan : documentation of and help for using RevMan, the software for producing Cochrane Reviews