Assessment criteria | Millar 1996 [63] | De la Cochetiere 2004 [39] | Wang 2009 [11] | Mshvildadze 2010 [30] | Mai 2011 [31] | Smith 2012 [64] | Stewart 2012 [40] | Norman 2013 [34] | Torraza 2013 [56] | Morrow 2013 [33] | Zhou 2015 [37] | McMurtry 2015 [32] | Sim 2015 [35] | Warner 2016 [38] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Do inclusion/exclusion criteria vary across comparison groups? | Yesa | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Is the selection of the comparison group inappropriate? | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Were valid and reliable measures (outcomes) applied consistently across all study participants? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Nob | Yes | Yes | Noc | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Are any important primary outcomes missing from the results? | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Are results believable given the study limitations? (overall quality of the study) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
To assess confounding | ||||||||||||||
Any attempt to balance allocation between groups (e.g., stratification, matching) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Were important confounding variables (gestational age or birth weight) taken into account in the design and/or analysis (by matching, stratification, multivariate analysis, etc.) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |