Impact of meta-analysis in clinical practice: the example of psychiatry

Abstract

Background: To analyze the features of the studies on meta-analysis in psychiatry and asssess the effect of these papers on the psychiatric reference textbooks.

Methods: Two researchers reviewed electronic databases Medline and Embase during the period 1977-98, using the key words: clinical trial, randomized observational trial, metaanalysis, systematic review. To confirm the validity of the searching strategy inter and intra-raters reliability was studied with satisfactory kappa figures.

Results: Psychiatry is the medical speciality in which more studies on meta-analysis have been carried out (N= 179, 11,79% out of the total), followed by cardiology and oncology. The increase in this kind of research during 197798 has been very high in all medical fields and, specifically, in psychiatry. There is no correlation between impact factor of a scientifical journal and number of meta-analysis published in it. Only 0.002% of the references of one of the most important textbook in psychiatry (Kaplan) are related to meta-analysis. There is no studies on meta-analysis developed by Spanish researchers.

Conclusions: Studies on meta-analysis are not referred by psychiatric reference textbooks. As a consequence, their impact on clinical practice is scarce.