Quality Assessment in Systematic Reviews: A Literature Review of Health Economic Evaluation of Hepatitis Studies

Abstract

Quang Vinh Tran, Phuong Hong Le, Trung Quang Vo*

The trend of carrying out a systematic review of systematic reviews has just been concentrated in clinical-effectiveness. In aspect of cost-effective-ness, there has not been any review of reviews implemented in economic evaluation of hepatitis. The aim of this study is to appraise qualitatively a range of systematic reviews of economic evaluation in case of hepatitis based on PRISMA guidelines. A systematic search was made on Medline, Science Direct, and Cochrane Library databases till August 2016. Search terms used were “review” OR (“literature”, “systematic”) AND “economic evaluation” OR (“cost effectiveness”, “cost benefit”, “cost utility”, “cost minimization”) AND “hepatitis” OR (“hep*”, “H?V”). A total of 25 articles researching economic evaluations of hepatitis were identified. Approxi-mately three-forth of articles (n=18; 72%) are classified in “Intermediate”, following by “Bad” with five papers (20%). The categories “Very Bad” and “Good” share the last two papers. None of papers achieves the “Excel-lent”. Seventeen is the most popular point gained by seven papers (28%). In short, PRISMA was proved to be an effective instrument due to its im-portant role in assessing included reviews. Even though there are various systematic reviews of economic evaluation published, their qualities are not synchronous and the number of studies which was really carried out based on PRISMA is modest.