Systematic Review Essay

With the rapid increase in the research conducted on health sciences, there is difficulty for researchers and clinicians to be up-to-date with the studies. Therefore, reviews that give a summary of the impact of different intervention experiments are a greatly efficient way to come up with a conclusion of what is effective and what isn't. Systematic reviews are different from the traditional kind in many ways. According to Petticrew and Roberts (2006), the systematic type of reviews normally involve a comprehensive and in depth plan along with search approach that is presumptive, with the aim of reducing partiality by finding, assessing, and integrating all significant research on a certain subject. In most cases, systematic reviews involve a component of meta-analysis that uses statistical methods to integrate the information acquired from different research into one quantitative result or outline effect size (cited in Uman, 2011).

The systematic types of reviews are usually published in educational settings. However, there are some databases and organizations particularly meant for promoting and distributing them. For instance, Cochrane Collaboration is a highly known and regarded international non-profit-making firm that supports, promotes and distributes meta-analyses and systematic reviews on how effective health care interventions are (Uman, 2011).

Meaning and Purpose of Systematic Reviews

Systematic reviewing is giving an outline of the provided evidence on a well formulated query that uses explicit and systematic ways to find, choose and thoroughly assess significant primary studies as well as extract and evaluate information acquired from the research incorporated in that particular review" (p. 5). This kind of reviewing involves prior identification of its scope (e.g. reviewing queries and sub- queries and/or undertaking sub-group evaluations); a complete search for all relevant research; use of precise criteria to exclude or include research; incorporation of recognized standards to thoroughly assess research quality; and clear ways of extracting and incorporating research results is used. In addition, systematic review finds, assesses and incorporates all the studies available and significant to a certain review query; collates all the information on a certain subject and finds the foundation of that information. It is also a complete report that uses clear procedures so that methods, assumptions and rationale can be examined (Cochrane.org, 2005).

Issue of Concern in the Article

The population of hypertensive people above the age of 24 worldwide was around 40% in the year 2008. In 2009, the overall financial burden caused by hypertension in USA was around $73.4 billion. Better management of hypertension brings about better health results. A big systematic review including 147 experimental reports on hypertension management state that a decrease of 10 mm Hg systolic BP and 5 mm Hg diastolic has been linked with a decrease by 20% of heart problems (coronary) and by 32% in stroke within one year. In addition, hypertension management is inexpensive; medical treatment leads to better health outcomes (better adjusted life-span; QALYs) (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

Purpose of the Paper

This review was aimed at evaluating the consistency and quality of propositions of modern global and national clinical guidelines on practice of examination, evaluation and control of hypertension, as well as to find out the level at which the guidelines are detailed by those systematic reviews that are Cochrane and those that are non-Cochrane (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

Credibility of Authors

The review's protocol was developed as a component of a preliminary course on meta-analysis and systematic reviews taught by Sharon E. Straus (SES) and Andrea C. Tricco (ACT) through Li Kashing Institute of Knowledge in St. Michael's Medical Centre. Some of the results were presented through posters at Madrid in Spain, during Cochrane Colloquium 19 (October 2011).

Four writers; Andrea C. Tricco, Lubna A. Al-Ansary, Ghada A. Bawazeer and Yaser A. Adi were able to get all the initial guidelines; they were accountable for the information's integrity as well as the data evaluation's accuracy (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

Overview of the Systematic Review

The review was meant to assess the consistency and quality of propositions of modern global and national guidelines on the examination, evaluation and control hypertension as well as to measure the level of comprehensiveness of the guidelines of those reviews that are Cochrane as well as those that are non-Cochrane. This review was done on the basis of a protocol and included input from professionals in high blood pressure and methods of systematic review (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

With regard to exclusion and inclusion methods, multi-disciplinary guidelines embraced by a national provider or governmental organization linked with the examination, evaluation and control of high blood pressure were incorporated. Each population subgroup needed to be assessed to make sure the guidelines meet the requirements of people with different co-morbidities; CPGs were exclusively centred on high blood pressure among such special groups as the aged, blacks, pregnant women and people with diabetes and children or such special situations as exclusively primary care or exclusively emergency management were left out. To make sure that most modern guidelines were incorporated, there was limited inclusion for 2006 January onwards. In addition, only those guidelines that were in English were incorporated (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

Medical text words and subject titles that were linked with guidelines and hypertension were used in searching EMBASE and MEDLINE through OVID line from 2006 January to 2011 September. Other than the search done through electronic database, there were search websites as well as Google, since the guidelines were not all indicated in databases. Particularly, the websites that were searched were: G-I-N;www.g-i-n.net, (www.guideline.gov), (www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/index.htm), (www.nice.org.uk) and (SIGN;www.sign.ac.uk). The searches for literature were conducted by an experienced expert in information (LP) (Al-Ansary et al., 2013).

To ensure dependability, there was training before the process of study selection began, by randomly sampling 25 citations. There were two reviewers who autonomously screened the results of the search for inclusion by means of a relevance method form that was pre-defined. The full-text paper was acquired for possibly significant CPGs and they were….....