Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Decision-makers often require high quality evidence in a timely and accessible manner to inform policy and practice decisions. A rapid review (RR) is to meet decision-makers’ needs for rapid evaluate to study that summarizes the relative data base on an question, which use methods to accelerate traditional systematic review (SR) processes to address urgent demands for synthesized evidence. But the epidemic characteristics of RRs have not been evaluated.
Objectives: To identify RR and survey of their epidemic characteristics.
Methods: An electronic literature search of all RRs from inception to February 2012 was conducted using PubMed and the Cochrane Library. using the following search terms ‘rapid review’ in the title and keywords. Two reviewers independently determined study eligibility and extracted details on published year, and country, convergence, and method detail etc.
Results: Fifty-seven studies were included, most of RRs found in 2000 (15.8%), 2001 (19.3%), and 2011 (19.3%); majority authors of RRs were UK (63.2%) and USA (19.3%), 17.5% were Canada, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, Cuba, China, Italy, and Germany; 35.1% were published in Health Technology Assessment; 47.4% focused on intervention, 24.6% for economic factors, 12.3% for diagnosis or screening, 8.8% for social issues, 6.9% for other; There are diverse approaches to conducting a RR in 57 RRs, but 43.9% used traditional SRs methods, only a few RRS did not specifically address the methodology; Traditional SRs takes minimum 6–12 months, but a RR takes 3 weeks to 6 months, which may lead to missing some relevant information and introduce selection bias, publication bias and language of publication bias during preparing RRs.
Conclusions: This survey showed that half RR methods and the implications of streamlining traditional systematic review processes. Therefore, undertake further research to increase methodological transparency, develop reporting standards, report the methodological limitations of RRs.
Objectives: To identify RR and survey of their epidemic characteristics.
Methods: An electronic literature search of all RRs from inception to February 2012 was conducted using PubMed and the Cochrane Library. using the following search terms ‘rapid review’ in the title and keywords. Two reviewers independently determined study eligibility and extracted details on published year, and country, convergence, and method detail etc.
Results: Fifty-seven studies were included, most of RRs found in 2000 (15.8%), 2001 (19.3%), and 2011 (19.3%); majority authors of RRs were UK (63.2%) and USA (19.3%), 17.5% were Canada, Australia, Sweden, Brazil, Cuba, China, Italy, and Germany; 35.1% were published in Health Technology Assessment; 47.4% focused on intervention, 24.6% for economic factors, 12.3% for diagnosis or screening, 8.8% for social issues, 6.9% for other; There are diverse approaches to conducting a RR in 57 RRs, but 43.9% used traditional SRs methods, only a few RRS did not specifically address the methodology; Traditional SRs takes minimum 6–12 months, but a RR takes 3 weeks to 6 months, which may lead to missing some relevant information and introduce selection bias, publication bias and language of publication bias during preparing RRs.
Conclusions: This survey showed that half RR methods and the implications of streamlining traditional systematic review processes. Therefore, undertake further research to increase methodological transparency, develop reporting standards, report the methodological limitations of RRs.