Systematic reviews and meta-analysis

Code:

OPT71

Acronym:

RSMA

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Medicine

Instance: 2023/2024 - 1S

Active?	No
Responsible unit:	Department of Community Medicine, Information and Health Decision Sciences
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master in Medicine

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIMED	0	Plano Oficial 2021	5	-	2	19	54

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

The practice of Medicine – from the promotion of health to the diagnosis and prognosis, therapy and prevention of disease – is clearly linked to the development, critical appraisal and application of high-quality scientific evidence to support healthcare of the highest quality.  Evidence synthesis studies, namely systematic reviews and meta-analysis, increasingly have a crucial role as a response to the growing accumulation of scientific evidence of heterogeneous nature, design, quality and results.

Learning outcomes and competences

At the end of this course, students should be able to: adequately define clinical research questions in this context; plan and conduct adequate bibliographic searches; define study selection criteria and assess the quality of included studies; extract and process data from included studies; understand and apply statistical methods in the context of a systematic review and meta-analysis; present, write, and critically appraise systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

Not applicable.

Program

Scientific Research in Health and Medicine. Evidence Based Medicine.

Evidence synthesis studies – definitions and classification.

Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis – operational phases:

• Research question formulation;
• Bibliographic searches;
• Studies selection;
• Data extraction and processing;
• Study quality and risk of bias assessment;
• Statistical analysis in evidence synthesis studies – Meta-Analysis: fixed effect and random effects models;
• Assessing between study heterogeneity;
• Publication and other bias in evidence synthesis studies;
• Presenting a protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis;
• Writing and publishing a systematic review and meta-analysis;
• Critical appraisal of systematic reviews and meta-analysis.

Mandatory literature

Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors).; Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.0 (updated July 2019). Cochrane, 2019. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook., John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2019. ISBN: 9781119536659

Complementary Bibliography

Borenstein, M., Hedges, L. V., Higgins, J. P., & Rothstein, H. R.; Introduction to meta-analysis. Second Edition., John Wiley & Sons., 2021
Sutton, A. J., Abrams, K.R., Jones, D. R., Sheldon, T. A. & Song, F. ; Methods for Meta-analysis in Medical Research, London, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2000

Teaching methods and learning activities

The course will have a total duration of 19 hours; 9 hours of theoretical classes and 10 hours of theoretical-practical classes. After the presentation of each topic, there will be time to solve practical exercises, typically using specific software to support the execution of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. An e-learning platform will be used to support theoretical and practical classes.

Software

Review Manager (RevMan) [Computer program]. Version 5.4, The Cochrane Collaboration, 2020. Available at https://training.cochrane.org/online-learning/core-software-cochrane-reviews/revman
Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(3), 1-48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v036.i03
R Core Team (2021). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.
Balduzzi S, Rücker G, Schwarzer G (2019), How to perform a meta-analysis with R: a practical tutorial, Evidence-Based Mental Health; 22: 153-160.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Exame	60,00
Trabalho escrito	40,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	22,00
Frequência das aulas	19,00
Trabalho escrito	13,00
Total:	54,00

Eligibility for exams

The students should be present in at least 75% of the classes.

Calculation formula of final grade

Evaluation and grading: Final written exam (60%); Submition of a practical assignment (40%)

Examinations or Special Assignments

In the practical assignment the student has to answer a set of questions in the context of the execution of a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Internship work/project

NA

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Special assessment periods will be allowed for typical cases, including employed students and members of the students' representatives association.

Classification improvement

It is possible in the context of the second call of the written exam and eventually with an oral exam.