An efficient strategy allowed English-speaking reviewers to identify foreign-language articles eligible for a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To assess English-speaking reviewers' accuracy in determining the eligibility of foreign-language articles for a systematic review. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTINGS: Systematic review of randomized controlled trials of therapy for fibromyalgia. Guided by 10 questions, English-speaking reviewers screened non-English-language articles for eligibility. Teams of two native-language speakers provided reference standard judgments of eligibility. RESULTS: Of 15,466 potentially eligible articles, we retrieved 763 in full text, of which 133 were published in 19 non-English languages; 53 trials published in 11 languages other than English proved eligible. Of the 53 eligible articles, English-language reviewers guided by the 10 questions mistakenly judged 6 as ineligible; of the 80 ineligible articles, 8 were incorrectly judged eligible by English-language reviewers (sensitivity=0.89; specificity=0.90). Use of a simple three-step rule (excluding languages with less than three articles, reviewing titles and abstracts for clear indications of eligibility, and noting the lack of a clearly reported statistical analysis unless the word "random" appears) led to accurate classification of 51 of 53 articles (sensitivity=0.96; specificity=0.70). CONCLUSION: Our findings show promise for limiting the need for non-English-language review teams in systematic reviews with large numbers of potentially eligible non-English-language articles.

Systematic review and network meta-analysis of interventions for fibromyalgia: a protocol.

BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia is associated with substantial socioeconomic loss and, despite considerable research including numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews, there exists uncertainty regarding what treatments are effective. No review has evaluated all interventional studies for fibromyalgia, which limits attempts to make inferences regarding the relative effectiveness of treatments. METHODS/DESIGN: We will conduct a network meta-analysis of all RCTs evaluating therapies for fibromyalgia to determine which therapies show evidence of effectiveness, and the relative effectiveness of these treatments. We will acquire eligible studies through a systematic search of CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, AMED, HealthSTAR, PsychINFO, PapersFirst, ProceedingsFirst, and the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials. Eligible studies will randomly allocate patients presenting with fibromyalgia or a related condition to an intervention or a control. Teams of reviewers will, independently and in duplicate, screen titles and abstracts and complete full text reviews to determine eligibility, and subsequently perform data abstraction and assess risk of bias of eligible trials. We will conduct meta-analyses to establish the effect of all reported therapies on patient-important outcomes when possible. To assess relative effects of treatments, we will construct a random effects model within the Bayesian framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. DISCUSSION: Our review will be the first to evaluate all treatments for fibromyalgia, provide relative effectiveness of treatments, and prioritize patient-important outcomes with a focus on functional gains. Our review will facilitate evidence-based management of patients with fibromyalgia, identify key areas for future research, and provide a framework for conducting large systematic reviews involving indirect comparisons.