Quality of meta-analyses in major leading orthopedics journals: A systematic review

Abstract Background Meta-Analyses are the basis of professional and healthcare agencies recommendations and have a growing importance. Quality of meta-analyses has been investigated in some medical fields but to our best knowledge this issue remains under investigated in orthopedics. Therefore, we performed a systematic analysis to: 1) after the introduction of PRISMA statement as a comprehensive guideline and the use of the AMSTAR tool as the standard for sufficient review methodology, has the quality of MAs improved because of that? 2) have some general characteristics influenced the quality of MAs (country, funding source, number of authors)? Material and Methods We systematically searched the meta-analyses in the top four journals with the impact factor (2015) as following: JBJS, Osteoarthritis Cartilage Arthroscopy and Clin Orthop Relat Res from 2005 to 2008 and from 2012 to 2015. Likewise from 2012–2015, we also analyzed the meta-analyses from OTSR. Characteristics were extracted based on the PRISMA statement and the AMSTAR tool. Country, number of authors, funding source were also extracted. Results A total of 154 meta-analyses were included in the present study. Score with PRISMA statement and the AMSTAR checklist were 20.86 ± 3.04 out of a maximum of 27 and 7.86 ± 1.55 out of a maximum of 11. The best journal was OTSR according to the PRISMA (23.06 ± 1.92) and AMSTAR (9.13 ± 0.87) scores. And the worst journal was Clin Orthop Relat Res according to the PRISMA score (19.4 ± 2.70) and JBJS according to the AMSTAR score (6.78 ± 1.65). Twelve items showed significant difference in the PRISMA statement, and five items in the AMSTAR checklist. Integral score of PRISMA statement and AMSTAR checklist has a significant difference between 2005-2008 and 2012–2015. The MAs reported from U.S. (56, 36.4%) were more than any other region in the world. And the MAs published by Asia/Oceania increased remarkably between these two period times [from (4, 10.8%) to (45, 38.5%)]. Conclusion This study showed that methodological reporting quality of meta-analyses in the major orthopedics journals has improved after the publication of the PRISMA statement. Level of evidence Level III.