AMSTAR stands for A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews. There has been a proliferation of systematic reviews as one of the key tools for evidence-based health care. This has presented both opportunities and risks. The opportunities being that it creates an environment where researchers can base decisions on accurate, succinct, credible, comprehensive and comprehensible summaries of the best available evidence on a topic thereby minimising error and bias. The risks include variation in quality and empirical validation.
Decision-makers have attempted to find ways of best utilizing the vast amounts of systematic reviews available to them that offer pertinent and well-founded literature that is of the highest quality. |