Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Aug 28, 2020; 8(4): 309-319
Published online Aug 28, 2020. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v8.i4.309
Importance of reporting quality: An assessment of the COVID-19 meta-analysis laboratory hematology literature
John L Frater
John L Frater, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, United States
Author contributions: The entire manuscript was researched and written by Frater JL .
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: This study was written according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: John L Frater, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Box 8118, St. Louis, MO 63110, United States. jfrater@wustl.edu
Received: June 8, 2020
Peer-review started: June 8, 2020
First decision: July 3, 2020
Revised: July 17, 2020
Accepted: August 27, 2020
Article in press: August 27, 2020
Published online: August 28, 2020
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Meta-analysis, a form of quantitative review, is an attempt to combine data from multiple independent studies to improve statistical power. Because of the complexity of process involved in study selection, data analysis, and evaluation of bias and heterogeneity, checklists have been prepared by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM), Preferred Reporting Items for Systemic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA), and Meta-analyses of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) to standardize the reporting quality of a meta-analysis.

AIM

To use these checklists to assess the reporting quality of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) meta-analysis literature relevant to laboratory hematology.

METHODS

After a search of the literature 19 studies were selected for analysis, including 10 studies appearing in the preprint literature (studies that can be identified by database search but have not yet completed peer review).

RESULTS

The average IOM (76% of required elements completed), PRISMA (75% of required elements completed), and MOOSE (60% of required elements completed) scores enumerated demonstrated a reporting quality inferior to that of earlier reports of pathology and medicine meta-analyses. There was no statistically significant difference in performance between accepted/ published and preprint studies. Comparison of the results of PRISMA and MOOSE studies demonstrated a weak positive correlation (Pearson’s correlation coefficient = 0.39).

CONCLUSION

The most common deficits in the studies included sensitivity analysis, assessment for bias, and details of the search strategy. Although the COVID-19 laboratory hematology meta-analysis literature can be a helpful source of information, readers should be aware of these reporting quality deficits.

Keywords: COVID-19, Meta-analysis, Reporting quality

Core Tip: The Institutes of Medicine, Preferred Reporting Items for Systemic Reviews and Meta-analyses, and Meta-analyses of Observational Studies in Epidemiology checklists were created to standardize the reporting quality of a meta-analysis. The purpose of this study was to use these checklists to assess the reporting quality of the coronavirus disease-2019 meta-analysis literature relevant to laboratory hematology.