The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews

Summary

Systematic reviews serve many critical roles. They can provide syntheses of the state of knowledge in a field, from which future research priorities can be identified; they can address questions that otherwise could not be answered by individual studies; they can identify problems in primary research that should be rectified in future studies; and they can generate or evaluate theories about how or why phenomena occur. Systematic reviews therefore generate various types of knowledge for different users of reviews (such as patients, healthcare providers, researchers, and policy makers).[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003583#pmed.1003583.ref001,https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003583#pmed.1003583.ref002]To ensure a systematic review is valuable to users, authors should prepare a transparent, complete, and accurate account of why the review was done, what they did (such as how studies were identified and selected) and what they found (such as characteristics of contributing studies and results of meta-analyses). Up-to-date reporting guidance facilitates authors achieving this.[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003583#pmed.1003583.ref003]

Key Points

• 1The PRISMA twenty twenty statement replaces the original 2009 guideline to enhance systematic review reporting
• 2It includes a twenty-seven-item checklist and abstract checklist for improved transparency
• 3The updated guidance reflects new methodologies for selecting and synthesizing studies
• 4Systematic reviews play a critical role in identifying research priorities and evaluating evidence in various fields
• 5The guidelines are relevant for systematic reviews evaluating health interventions and other areas.

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