E-DRUG: How to read a paper
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BMJ No 7109 Volume 315
Education and debate Saturday 13 September 1997
How to read a paper
Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and
meta-analyses) by Trisha Greenhalgh
This is the ninth in a series of 10 articles introducing
non-experts to finding medical articles and assessing their value
.....a systematic review is an overview of primary studies which
contains an explicit statement of objectives, materials, and methods
and has been conducted according to explicit and reproducible
methodology..... When a systematic review is undertaken, not only
must the search for relevant articles be thorough and objective, but
the criteria used to reject articles as "flawed" must be explicit
and independent of the results of those trials.
Summary points
A systematic review is an overview of primary studies that used
explicit and reproducible methods
A meta-analysis is a mathematical synthesis of the results of two
or more primary studies that addressed the same hypothesis in the
same way
Although meta-analysis can increase the precision of a result, it
is important to ensure that the methods used for the review were
valid and reliable
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