Citation

Goodman JE, Ticknor RC, Zhou J. Glob. Epidemiol. 2022; 4: e100091.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.gloepi.2022.100091

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the commentaries on our paper, "Systematic Review of Perchloroethylene and Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma." [1] As noted by LaKind et al. [2], there are an overwhelming number of systematic review frameworks, many of which are time- and resource-intensive. Our goal was to demonstrate that there are ways to make the systematic review process more manageable, while still adhering to a rigorous, transparent method that incorporates study quality.

When reviewing individual studies in the context of study quality, we found that it is most helpful to first determine what aspects of study quality are likely to have the most impact on the interpretation of results, instead of spending time and resources on sometimes up to dozens of aspects that ultimately may not have much impact. However, we agree with Fox et al. [3] that even the most impactful study quality criteria are not equivalent in terms of their impact, and note that we disagree with how Weed [4] classified studies by the number of quality aspects that are high vs. low quality, as this is an oversimplification. We also note that there may be some quality aspects that could be impactful in a minority of studies, and these aspects of study quality should not be ignored when evaluating those studies...

Language: en

Keywords

Bradford Hill; Epidemiology; Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; Perchloroethylene; Systematic review; Tetrachloroethylene