Clinical utility of overviews on adverse events of pharmacological interventions.

Background: Overviews (i.e., systematic reviews of systematic reviews, meta-reviews, umbrella reviews) are a relatively new type of evidence synthesis.

A review found heterogeneous approaches and insufficient reporting in overviews on adverse events.

Objectives: To investigate reporting and methodological characteristics of overviews on adverse (drug-associated) events (AEs) of pharmacological interventions.

Study Design And Setting: We searched MEDLINE, Embase, Epistemonikos, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from inception to May 17, 2021 for overviews exclusively investigating AEs of pharmacological interventions. We extracted general, reporting, and methodological characteristics and analyzed data descriptively.