Background: The Oral Health Specialist Library, a specialist website within the National Library for Health, methodically identifies, appraises and summarises research to provide rapid access to the best available evidence for use in oral health care. During assessment of oral health systematic reviews, it has been observed that reviewers often fail to report their methods and results adequately in journal-published reviews, making validity assessment difficult.

Objectives: This study aims to examine formally: (1) The quality of the reporting of oral health systematic reviews (SRs) and metaanalyses (MAs) in journals. (2) Whether reporting has improved over time and following the introduction of the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses (QUOROM) Statement.

Methods: Identification of papers: One reviewer will identify and select papers for assessment according to the search strategy and inclusion criteria outlined below: MEDLINE, MEDLINE in Process, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, and DARE will be searched from January 1998 to April 2006. Oral health MeSH headings and free text words will be combined with the McMaster filter for SRs and MAs. Eligible papers will be SRs and/or MAs of effectiveness, which:

- include randomized controlled trials involving adults and/or children;

- are published in oral health (dental, oral or maxillofacial) journals or include oral health studies;

- published between January 1998 and April 2006.


Quality assessment: All eligible reviews will be assessed using the QUOROM checklist criteria. Data will be extracted for each of the 18 items in the checklist. This will be conducted by two independent reviewers, and disagreements discussed to reach consensus.

Analysis: Mean QUOROM scores will be calculated for each year to assess compliance with the standards over time. Frequency rating percentages for individual checklist items will also be calculated to identify gaps in reporting patterns.

Conclusions: Results will be presented at the Cochrane Colloquium.