How to conduct reviews of risks of health effects resulting from exposure

Article type
Authors
Verbeek J1, Hoving J2
1Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
2Coronel Institute for Occupational Health, Academic Medical Center
Abstract
Objectives: to learn to conduct a systematic review of health effects of environmental or occupational exposure

Description: Methods for conducting intervention reviews are well-established and laid down in the Cochrane Handbook. Reviews of exposure differ from intervention reviews in two fundamental ways. With long-term irreversible outcomes, exposure reviews will be based on observational studies usually cohort and case-control studies instead of RCTs. Where an intervention is an on or off phenomenon, exposure consists of multiple levels. The objective of the exposure review is to establish a dose-response relation.
In the workshop, participants will learn how to:
- formulate a proper PECCOS question as the analogue of PICO;
- how to extract and transform data from studies needed for a dose-response analysis for an air-quality study or a shift work study;
- how to assess risk of bias in a cohort study and a case-control study.
After the workshop, participants with previous knowledge of intervention reviews will be able to assess the quality of exposure reviews.