Assessing the reporting of harms in systematic reviews focused on platelet-rich plasma therapy: a cross-sectional analysis

Aim: Our objectives are: to evaluate the completeness of harms reporting in systematic reviews (SRs) on platelet-rich plasma therapy; to assess the overall methodological quality of the SR using AMSTAR-2 tool; to assess harms reporting overlap in primary studies between SRs. Materials & methods: The authors searched five database systems for relevant literature on platelet rich plasma therapy. The authors screened and extracted in masked, duplicate fashion. Results: All SRs reported less than 50% completeness in harms reporting. The most frequently reported item was harms being stated in the abstract or title (26/103, 25.2%). AMSTAR-2 assessed 96 SRs as 'critically low', 6 SRs as 'low' and 1 'moderate'. Conclusion: Our study highlights that reporting of harms should become more standardized and transparent. Plain language summaryThis study looked at how well the negative effects (harms) of platelet-rich plasma therapy are reported in systematic reviews (SRs). The researchers carefully reviewed and extracted data of SRs from different databases. They found that less than 50% of the SRs reported the harms associated with platelet rich plasma therapy. The researchers also used a tool called AMSTAR to assess the value of each of the SRs, and most were found to be 'critically low' reviews. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of platelet rich plasma therapy negative effect reporting by SRs. Tweetable abstractHarms of platelet rich plasma therapy must be adequately evaluated and reported to provide patients with the best care possible. Of the 103 included systematic reviews, all SRs reported less than 50% completeness in harms reporting.