Assessing the reporting of harms in systematic reviews focused on platelet-rich plasma therapy: a cross-sectional analysis

Abstract

Aim: Our objectives are: to evaluate the completeness of harms reporting in systematic reviews (SRs) on platelet-rich plasma therapy; to assess the overall methodological quality of the SR using AMSTAR-2 tool; to assess harms reporting overlap in primary studies between SRs. Materials & methods: The authors searched five database systems for relevant literature on platelet rich plasma therapy. The authors screened and extracted in masked, duplicate fashion. Results: All SRs reported less than 50% completeness in harms reporting. The most frequently reported item was harms being stated in the abstract or title (26/103, 25.2%). AMSTAR-2 assessed 96 SRs as ‘critically low’, 6 SRs as ‘low’ and 1 ‘moderate’. Conclusion: Our study highlights that reporting of harms should become more standardized and transparent.