Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services

Method

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The process of producing a systematic review

SBU produces systematic reviews according to the PRISMA statement, and the methods and procedures to produce a systematic review is described in the SBU Handbook. SBU has revised most chapters of the previously published Handbook and a new version was published on October 15, 2020. Some of the more important revisions are the change of checklists to assess risk of bias (or methodological limitations for qualitative studies) and updated guidelines for the GRADE and CERQual assessment. The Handbook is available as a html version in Swedish language only on the SBU website. For those interested in the methodology we refer to the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and relevant guidelines for GRADE and CERQual.

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Previously published versions of the SBU Handbook

The previously published version of the SBU handbook in English (2018), that is no longer in use, can be found here.

Handbook for evaluation and synthesis of studies using qualitative methods of analysis
The previously published handbook Evaluation and synthesis of studies using qualitative methods of analysis (2016) can be found here.

Checklists

These are useful tools and checklists when assessing studies for a systematic review:

Primary studies

Systematic reviews

Health Economics and Ethics

* SBU uses a version translated to Swedish.
** SBU do not use CASP. Instead a checklist developed by SBU is used, only available in Swedish.
*** SBU uses a version translated to Swedish, with a question added regarding conflict of interest.
**** Checklist developed by SBU based on Tong et al, 2012.

Page updated February 8, 2021