Methodological Quality Analysis of Systematic Review for the Treatment of Rotator Cuff Disease^*

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the methodological quality of systematic reviews for the surgical and nonsurgical treatment of individuals with rotator cuff syndrome; to compare, through the Assessing the methodological quality of systematic reviews (AMSTAR) instrument, the quality of studies found in the Cochrane Library, PubMed (Publisher Medline), EMBASE andQinsightdatabases.

Methods

This is a descriptive and comparative cross-sectional study, in which two independent authors analyzed, through the AMSTAR instrument, the methodological quality of Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews on the treatment of individuals diagnosed with rotator cuff syndrome.

Results

A total of 76 systematic reviews were evaluated by the AMSTAR instrument. The overall mean score was 6.1 (±2.1) and the mean per database was 9.1 (±0.9) for the Cochrane reviews and 5.7 (±1.8) for the non-Cochrane reviews. The lowest-scoring item of AMSTAR was 11, related to the display of the conflict of interests of the publication. In a comparative analysis of the final variable score, there was a statistical difference between the Cochrane and non-Cochrane studies.

Conclusion

According to the present study, systematic reviews using the Cochrane methodology have a better methodological quality compared to non-Cochrane studies on the treatment of rotator cuff dysfunctions.

Keywords:
rotator cuff; methodology; systematic review