It has been almost a decade since the publication in mid-2009 of the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” statement, more commonly referred to as the PRISMA statement, which replaced the QUOROM (Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses) statement published ten years before, in 1999.
1: Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG; PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Med. 2009 Jul 21;6(7):e1000097. PMID: 19621072; PMCID: PMC2707599.
2: Moher D, Cook DJ, Eastwood S, Olkin I, Rennie D, Stroup DF. Improving the quality of reports of meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials: the QUOROM statement. Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses. Lancet. 1999 Nov 27;354(9193):1896-900. PMID: 10584742.
Standardizing and improving the quality of reporting methods benefits everyone. PRISMA makes it easier for researchers to strive for and achieve more completeness in their reporting of systematic reviews, which in turn makes it easier for readers of published systematic reviews to obtain a more complete picture of the research that was carried out, increasing the likelihood that they will trust – and therefore make use of – the reported results.
It is not surprising then, that as systematic reviews as a study design increase in popularity, the types of questions asked and the types of studies being included in these reviews is expanding well beyond randomized controlled trials of therapeutic interventions, which is what the original PRISMA statement was mostly geared towards accommodating.
This trend consequently has spawned the development of multiple “specialized” checklists/reporting guidelines (that have been published within the last five years), all adapted from the original PRISMA statement.
Following is a list of these adapted PRISMA reporting guidelines, as compiled by the Equator Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research):
Welch V, Petticrew M, Tugwell P, Moher D, O’Neill J, Waters E, White H; PRISMA-Equity Bellagio group. PRISMA-Equity 2012 Extension: Reporting Guidelines for Systematic Reviews with a Focus on Health Equity. PLoS Med. 2012;9(10):e1001333. PMID: 23222917
Welch V, Petticrew M, Petkovic J, Moher D, Waters E, White H, Tugwell P; PRISMA-Equity Bellagio group. Extending the PRISMA statement to equity-focused systematic reviews (PRISMA-E 2012): explanation and elaboration. Int J Equity Health. 2015;14(1):92. PMID: 26450828. J Clin Epidemiol. 2015. PMID: 26348799
Beller EM, Glasziou PP, Altman DG, Hopewell S, Bastian H, Chalmers I, Gøtzsche PC, Lasserson T, Tovey D; PRISMA for Abstracts Group. PRISMA for Abstracts: Reporting Systematic Reviews in Journal and Conference Abstracts. PLoS Med. 2013;10(4):e1001419. PMID: 23585737
Moher D, Shamseer L, Clarke M, Ghersi D, Liberati A, Petticrew M, Shekelle P, Stewart LA. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 statement. Syst Rev. 2015;4(1):1. PMID: 25554246
Stewart LA, Clarke M, Rovers M, Riley RD, Simmonds M, Stewart G, Tierney JF; PRISMA-IPD Development Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of individual participant data: the PRISMA-IPD Statement. JAMA. 2015;313(16):1657-1665. PMID: 25919529
PRISMA extension for network meta-analyses:
Hutton B, Salanti G, Caldwell DM, Chaimani A, Schmid CH, Cameron C, Ioannidis JP, Straus S, Thorlund K, Jansen JP, Mulrow C, Catalá-López F, Gøtzsche PC, Dickersin K, Boutron I, Altman DG, Moher D. The PRISMA Extension Statement for Reporting of Systematic Reviews Incorporating Network Meta-analyses of Health Care Interventions: Checklist and Explanations. Ann Intern Med. 2015;162(11):777-784. PMID: 26030634
Zorzela L, Loke YK, Ioannidis JP, Golder S, Santaguida P, Altman DG, Moher D, Vohra S; PRISMA harms group. PRISMA harms checklist: improving harms reporting in systematic reviews. BMJ. 2016;352:i157. PMID: 26830668
Guise JM, Butler ME, Chang C, Viswanathan M, Pigott T, Tugwell P; Complex Interventions Workgroup. AHRQ Series on Complex Intervention Systematic Reviews – Paper 6: PRISMA-CI Extension Statement & Checklist. J Clin Epidemiol. 2017. PMID: 28720516
McInnes MDF, Moher D, Thombs BD, McGrath TA, Bossuyt PM; and the PRISMA-DTA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy Studies: The PRISMA-DTA Statement. JAMA. 2018;319(4):388-396. PMID: 29362800
Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, O’Brien KK, Colquhoun H, Levac D, Moher D, Peters MDJ, Horsley T, Weeks L, Hempel S, Akl EA, Chang C, McGowan J, Stewart L, Hartling L, Aldcroft A, Wilson MG, Garritty C, Lewin S, Godfrey CM, Macdonald MT, Langlois EV, Soares-Weiser K, Moriarty J, Clifford T, Tunçalp Ö, Straus SE. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018. PMID: 30178033
Be sure to check out the MSK Library’s Systematic Review (SR) Service LibGuide for more information or Ask Us if you have any questions regarding systematic reviews.