Investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews

Workshop category: 

  • Education and training
Date and Location

Date: 

Tuesday 18 September 2018 - 11:00 to 12:30

Location: 

Lammermuir 1
Contact persons and facilitators

Contact person:

Joel Gagnier

Facilitators:

Gagnier J1
1 University of Michigan, USA
Target audience

Target audience: 

review authors, consumers

Level of difficulty: 

Intermediate
Type of workshop

Type of workshop : 

Training
Abstract

Abstract:

Background:
Critics of systematic reviews have argued that these documents often fail to inform clinical decision making because their results are far too general, and findings cannot be applied to individual patients. While there is some consensus on methods in systematic reviews for investigating statistical and methodological heterogeneity, little attention has been paid to clinical aspects of heterogeneity. Clinical heterogeneity may be defined as differences within and between trials that arise from variables related to the patients, intervention, outcome measurements and research setting.

Objectives:
1) To aid systematic reviewers in investigating clinical aspects of heterogeneity in systematic reviews of controlled trials.
2) To gather feedback on how systematic reviewers can incorporate patient perspective and opinion when investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews.

Description:
Recently, consensus-based recommendations were created to guide reviewers on methods for investigating clinical heterogeneity. These include recommendations regarding expertise to include in the review process, how to choose variables, statistical methods for investigating the influence of such variables, and how these investigations can be used in forming conclusions or improving the applicability of systematic reviews. We will present these recommendations in detail and allow participants to work through this material with research questions about areas of their own specific interest. We will have extensive interaction and debate, in a focus group-like setting, about how systematic reviewers can incorporate the patient perspective and opinion when investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews. In addition, we will discuss the role of patient-reported outcome measures in reflecting patient characteristics in systematic reviews.
Attachments

Attachments: 

File Author addresses heterogeneity.docx

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

This workshop is aimed at helping systematic reviewers investigating clinical aspects of heterogeneity in systematic reviews. In particular, "clinical" aspects include patient-specific characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, commorbidities, health-related quality of life (e.g. scores on patient-reported outcomes), and socioeconomic status. Therefore, this workshop is obviously relevant to patients and other health-care consumers in that the variables we will be discussing are directly patient oriented. We will gather patient recommendations for improving our guidance for investigating clinical heterogeneity in systematic reviews.