Introduction to Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses

Abstract

A systematic review uses explicit and documented methods to collect and synthesize the findings of studies with the aim of answering a clearly formulated research question.¹

Systematic reviews have several functions, including: a) providing a synthesis of current knowledge in a disciplinary field, allowing the identification of future research priorities, b) addressing questions that could not otherwise be answered by individual studies, c) identifying research problems that should be addressed in future studies and d) generating or evaluating theories about how or why the phenomena occur.²

The publication of systematic reviews has grown exponentially in the last decades. Although they are considered high quality evidence, they are subject to biases and errors. For this reason, several organizations, including the Cochrane Collaboration, have developed methodological guides to improve quality.^{1, 3, 4}