Enhancing the quality of evidence, comparability, and reproducibility in brain arteriovenous malformations treated with open surgery research: a systematic review and proposal of a reporting guideline for surgical and clinical outcomes

This study aims to assess the quality of studies reporting clinical and surgical outcomes for bAVMs treated by open surgery and develop a reporting guideline checklist focusing on essential elements to ensure comparability and reproducibility.  This is a systematic literature review that followed the PRISMA guidelines with the search inMedline,Embase, andWeb of Science databases, for studies published between January 1, 2018, and December 1, 2023. Included studies were scrutinized focusing on seven domains: (1) Assessment of How Studies Reported on the Baseline Characteristics of the Patient Sample; (2) Assessment and reporting on bAVMs grading, anatomical characteristics, and radiological aspects; (3) Angioarchitecture Assessment and Reporting; (4) Reporting on Pivotal Concepts Definitions; (5) Reporting on Neurosurgeon(s) and Staff Characteristics; (6) Reporting on Surgical Details; (7) Assessing and Reporting Clinical and Surgical Outcomes and AEs.  A total of 47 studies comprising 5,884 patients were included. The scrutiny of the studies identified that the current literature in bAVM open surgery is deficient in many aspects, ranging from fundamental pieces of information of methodology to baseline characteristics of included patients and da ta reporting. Included studies demonstrated a lack of reproducibility that hinders building cumulative evidence. A bAVM Open Surgery Reporting Guideline with 65 items distributed across eight domains was developed and is proposed in...
Source: Neurosurgical Review - Category: Neurosurgery Source Type: research