Quality assessment for included studies
| Case series | |||||||||||||||
| Questions | |||||||||||||||
| Ref | Study | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Overall rating | Level of evidence | |||
| 4 | Murphy et al4 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 12 | Kostogloudis et al12 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 18 | Linder et al18 | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 19 | Linder et al19 | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 25 | Boyar and Galiczewski25 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 27 | Myers et al17 | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 30 | Onesti et al30 | N | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 34 | Yan et al34 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | − | Y | Good | 4 | |||
| 10 | Falcone et al10 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 13 | Sung and Lee13 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 23 | Weiss et al23 | N | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 29 | Cho et al29 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 31 | Firat et al31 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 33 | Sivrioglu and Irkoren33 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Fair | 4 | |||
| 11 | Ghanem et al11 | Y | Y | N | Y | N | N | Y | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 14 | Odom et al14 | Y | Y | N | Y | N | Y | N | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 15 | Compaña et al15 | N | N | N | Y | N | N | − | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 16 | Harris et al16 | N | N | Y | − | Y | N | − | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 17 | Andrés et al17 | Y | N | Y | N | Y | Y | − | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 20 | Upton et al20 | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 21 | Casanova et al21 | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | N | N | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 22 | von Heimburg and Pallua22 | N | N | Y | N | Y | N | Y | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 26 | Yan et al26 | Y | N | Y | − | Y | N | Y | Y | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 28 | Cochran et al28 | Y | N | N | Y | Y | N | N | − | N | Poor | 4 | |||
| 32 | Ching et al32 | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| 5 | Gault5 | N | N | Y | N | Y | Y | N | − | Y | Poor | 4 | |||
| Before-and-after study | |||||||||||||||
| Ref | Study | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Overall rating | Level of evidence |
| 24 | Hanrahan24 | Y | N | − | − | Y | Y | Y | N | − | Y | N | N | Fair | 3 |
| Key | Y | N | − | ||||||||||||
| Yes | No | N/A, Not recorded or cannot determine | |||||||||||||
Case series questions
(1) Was the study question or objective clearly stated?
(2) Was the study population clearly and fully described, including a case definition?
(3) Were the cases consecutive?
(4) Were the subjects comparable?
(5) Was the intervention clearly described?
(6) Were the outcome measures clearly defined, valid, reliable and implemented consistently across all study participants?
(7) Was the length of follow-upadequate?
(8) Were the statistical methods well described?
(9) Were the results well described?
Before-and-after study questions
(1) Was the study question or objective clearly stated?
(2) Were eligibility/selection criteria for the study population prespecified and clearly described?
(3) Were the participants in the study representative of those who would be eligible for the test/service/intervention in the general or clinical population of interest?
(4) Were all eligible participants who met the prespecified entry criteria enrolled?
(5) Was the sample size sufficiently large to provide confidence in the findings?
(6) Was the test/service/intervention clearly described and delivered consistently across the study population?
(7) Were the outcome measures prespecified, clearly defined, valid, reliable and assessed consistently across all study participants?
(8) Were the people assessing the outcomes blinded to the participants’ exposures/interventions?
(9) Was the loss to follow-up after baseline 20% or less? Were those lost to follow-up accounted for in the analysis?
(10) Did the statistical methods examine changes in outcome measures from before to after the intervention? Were statistical tests done that provided p-values for the pre-to-post changes?
(11) Were outcome measures of interest taken multiple times before the intervention and multiple times after the intervention (ie, did they use an interrupted time-series design)?
(12) If the intervention was conducted at a group level (eg, a whole hospital, a community) did the statistical analysis take into account the use of individual-level data to determine effects at the group level?