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Systematic Review Vs Narrative Review.
- Vivek Agarwal, Nita Agarwal (1 July 2009)
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Vivek Agarwal, Specialty Registrar N Essex Partnerships Foundation NHS Trust, Nita Agarwal
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dragarwalv{at}gmail.com Vivek Agarwal, et al.
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We would like to first thank Sinclair and colleagues(1), for bringing the information on this important topic together in a coherent narrative. At the risk of contradicting our first statement, we felt that there was an attempt in this review to answer too many questions, so then, "Is it really a systematic review?" According to Trisha Greenhalgh(2), the first two essential elements of a systematic review are - a precisely defined question and a thorough search that includes foreign language literature. The paper begins with a clear statement of its aim, but this is followed by a list of questions, which makes the scope of this venture too broad to be described as a systematic review. It may be more appropriate, then, to call it a narrative review. Cook et al(3) have clearly distinguished between these two types of integrative research approaches. A systematic review is produced to answer a specific and narrow clinical question, explores comprehensive sources with an explicit search strategy, employs a uniformly applied selection process and there is rigorous critical appraisal of all selected studies. There is usually a quantitative summary in the end. A narrative review, on the other hand, often, is very broad in scope, the search and selection process may not be explicit leaving room for potential bias, critical appraisal may be variable and the result is a qualitative summary. On reading the paper in detail, we felt that it has features of both types of reviews. We would like to leave it up to the readers to decide whether they feel it is a systematic review, which is not quite systematic or to call it a narrative review, which has been done robustly. 1. Sinclair L, Christmas DM, Hood SD, Potokar JP, Robertson A, Isaac A, Srivastava S, Nutt DJ, and Davies SJC. Antidepressant-induced jitteriness/anxiety syndrome: systematic review. The British Journal of Psychiatry 2009; 194: 483-490 2. Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and meta-analyses). British Medical Journal 1997; 315: 672-675 3. Cook DJ, Mulrow CD and Haynes RB. Systematic Reviews: Synthesis of Best Evidence for Clinical Decisions. Annals of Internal Medicine 1997; 126: 376-380 |
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