Reading and interpreting reviews for health professionals: a practical review
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Reading and interpreting reviews for health professionals: a practical review Michele Antonelli1,2,3 · Fabio Firenzuoli3 · Carlo Salvarani4,5 · Gian Franco Gensini6 · Davide Donelli1,3,5 Received: 29 March 2020 / Accepted: 1 April 2020 © Società Italiana di Medicina Interna (SIMI) 2020
Abstract Literature reviews can be directly used by clinicians and other health professionals to support many decision-making processes. This review aims to offer health professionals an essential practical guide to critically evaluate and properly understand results of review articles published in the scientific literature. An evidence-based methodological review with step-by-step theoretical concepts and practical suggestions was developed. Key steps of this guide are: to consider the topic and the research question (a), to check the review type (b), to evaluate the methodology (with a keen focus on review guidelines, search strategy and study-selection process, evaluation of the quality and certainty of included evidence, and statistical analysis) (c), and to define the real impact of review results (d). This guide offers a description of essential and easy-to-apply key steps which can help health professionals to evaluate the reliability and implications of a literature review, and to select the latest high-quality scientific evidence to keep updated with. Keywords Review · Evidence-based medicine · Methodology · Scientific literacy
Introduction Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is defined as a scientific approach characterized by “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients” [1]. On top of the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-020-02334-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Michele Antonelli [email protected] 1
Terme di Monticelli, via Basse 5, Monticelli Terme, 43022 Parma, Italy
2
Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma (UniPr), 43125 Parma, Italy
3
Research and Innovation Center in Phytotherapy and Integrated Medicine (CERFIT), Careggi University Hospital, 50139 Florence, Italy
4
Department of Surgery, Medicine, Dentistry and Morphological Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UniMoRe), 41125 Modena, Italy
5
Azienda USL-IRCCS Di Reggio Emilia, 42122 Reggio Emilia, Italy
6
IRCCS MultiMedica, Sesto San Giovanni, 20099 Milan, Italy
pyramid of evidence, systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the scientific literature can be found [2]. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses aim at pooling data from similar studies on the same topic to obtain results characterized by a higher level of evidence than those ones derived from a single study [3]. This particular methodology has markedly grown in the past years as a practical application of the concepts of EBM to biomedical secondary research (whereas primary research refers to studies directly involving subjects a
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