Assessing and presenting summaries of evidence in Cochrane Reviews

Cochrane Reviews are intended to help providers, practitioners and patients make informed decisions about health care. The goal of the Cochrane Applicability and Recommendation Methods Group (ARMG) is to develop approaches, strategies and guidance that facilitate the uptake of information from Cochrane Reviews and their use by a wide audience with specific focus on developers of recommendations and on healthcare decision makers. This paper is part of a series highlighting developments in systematic review methodology in the 20 years since the establishment of The Cochrane Collaboration, and its aim is to present current work and highlight future developments in assessing and presenting summaries of evidence, with special focus on Summary of Findings (SoF) tables and Plain Language Summaries. A SoF table provides a concise and transparent summary of the key findings of a review in a tabular format. Several studies have shown that SoF tables improve accessibility and understanding of Cochrane Reviews. The ARMG and GRADE Working Group are working on further development of the SoF tables, for example by evaluating the degree of acceptable flexibility beyond standard presentation of SoF tables, developing SoF tables for diagnostic test accuracy reviews and interactive SoF tables (iSoF). The plain language summary (PLS) is the other main building block for dissemination of review results to end-users. The PLS aims to summarize the results of a review in such a way that health care consumers can readily understand them. Current efforts include the development of a standardized language to describe statistical results, based on effect size and quality of supporting evidence. Producing high quality PLS and SoF tables and making them compatible and linked would make it easier to produce dissemination products targeting different audiences (for example, providers, health policy makers, guideline developers). Current issues of debate include optimal presentation formats of SoF tables, the training required to produce SoF tables, and the extent to which the authors of Cochrane Reviews should provide explicit guidance to target audiences of patients, clinicians and policy-makers

Transurethral radiofrequency collagen denaturation for the treatment of women with urinary incontinence

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Extended versus standard lymph node dissection for urothelial carcinoma of the bladder in patients undergoing radical cystectomy

We acknowledge the support received from the author of the in-cluded study, Jürgen E. Gschwend who provided information onthe method of blinding. We are very grateful to Annemarie Uhlig, Guillaume Ploussard,Wassim Kassouf, Caroline Raw and Martin Burton for havingserved as peer reviewers. We thank Cochrane Urology, ManagingEditor Robert Lane and Cochrane Fast-Track Service, ManagingEditor Helen Wakeford, for the support we received.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Naftopidil for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms compatible with benign prostatic hyperplasia

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Screening for prostate cancer: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Objective To examine the evidence on the benefits and harms of screening for prostate cancer

Systematic review of perioperative and quality-of-life outcomes following surgical management of localised renal cancer

UCAN Cancer Charity (www.ucanhelp.org.uk) and MacMillan Cancer Charity (www.macmillan.org.uk) helped design and conduct the study.Peer reviewedPostprin

Minimally invasive treatments for benign prostatic hyperplasia : a Cochrane network meta-analysis

Acknowledgements This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) [Cochrane Incentive Award (NIHR130819)]. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. We are very grateful to Cochrane Urology, especially Managing Editor Robert Lane, as well as Cochrane Urology Korea, for supporting this review. We are also grateful for the constructive feedback from the Cancer Network and the Methods Support Unit. We also thank Gretchen Kuntz for revising and providing feedback on the search strategies; Marco Blanker, Sevann Helo, and Murad Mohammad for their peer review input of the protocol; Dominik Abt, Bilal Chughtai, and Ahmed Higazy for providing details on the outcomes of their trials, for them to be incorporated accurately in our review; Marc Sapoval, Deepak Agarwal, Cameron Alexander, Harris Foster, and Mitchell Humphreys for their peer review input of the review. Juan Víctor Ariel Franco is a PhD candidate in the Programme of Methodology of Biomedical Research and Public Health, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain)Peer reviewedPostprin