1. Systematic Reviews: Hints and tips
Ellen Backhouse

2. www.ccace.ed.ac.uk Our systematic review
Early life risk factors for stroke and subclinical cerebrovascular disease
Looking at whether poorer childhood SES, lower education and lower IQ were associated with increased risk of cerebrovascular disease (white matter hyperintensities, perivascular spaces, small vessel disease etc.) or clinically evident stroke.
We searched Medline, EMBASE and PsycInfo electronically and hand searched Stroke, Neurology and International Journal of Epidemiology.
This is our PRISMA diagram which shows how many papers we identified, how many abstracts scanned, how many full texts were read, how many studies we included.
Figure 1. PRISMA Flow chart of methodology and study selection
Backhouse et al., Neurology 2017; 88(7):
McHutchison et al., Epidemiol, 2017; 28(4):

3. Hints and tips: Before you start
Write a protocol
What are the objectives of the review and what questions will be addressed?
What databases are you going to search?
What are your inclusion/exclusion criteria?
What data are you going to extract?
Quality assessment
Register on PROSPERO

4. Hints and tips: Developing a search strategy
Get help from a librarian
Test your search terms
Do they return papers you would expect to see?
Test using different databases
Record the date of the search
Different MeSH
headlines
Developing a search strategy is
Different use
of wild cards

5. Hints and tips: screening articles
Be over-inclusive
Note everything that might be of interest
Record clear reasons for exclusion
Discuss with the wider research group
Don’t forget the supplementary material
Take breaks!

6. Hints and tips: Data extraction
Designing the form
What information should I extract?
Paper/Electronic?
Test the form
Get someone who hasn’t been involved to test it
Consider different ways of conducting double data extraction
Important identifying information
Easy to identify papers on the same population

7. Hints and tips: data analysis
A table of included studies can be useful
Don’t panic if your results are heterogeneous
Can use a mixture of narrative and statistical analysis
Can use raw data to calculate effect sizes
If doing a meta-analysis use useful software programmes such as
Review Manager R
Use similar reviews for reference

8. Hints and tips: Write up and submission
Use other programs to edit the figures (e.g. add extra labels and legends etc.)
Adobe photoshop/elements
Inkscape (it’s free!)
MS Paint
MS Powerpoint
Check the journals submission requirements before you do anything
Are there things that can be included as supplementary documents?
Check the format for figures/tables
This process can take a while – be patient!
Useful for producing high quality images
Can be used to make minor changes

9. Hints and tips: general points
Don’t underestimate the time required
Record EVERYTHING
Don’t panic if it takes longer than expected

10. www.ccace.ed.ac.uk Acknowledgements Systematic Review Team
Caroline McHutchison
Professor Joanna Wardlaw
Dr Susie Shenkin
Dr Vera Cvoro
Cochrane Librarian
Brenda Thomas