Central University of Punjab and AIIMS Bathinda organized a one-day workshop on “Basics of Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”

Bathinda, March 22, 2023: Central University of Punjab, in collaboration with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bathinda, organized a one-day workshop on 'Basics of Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis' on Tuesday. The program was organized under the patronage of Prof. Raghavendra P. Tiwari, Vice-Chancellor, CUPB and Prof. D.K. Singh, Director, AIIMS Bathinda. During this program, participants got an opportunity to interact with Dr. Tarun Goyal, Dept. of Orthopaedics, AIIMS Bathinda, and Dr. Rachna Rohilla, Dept. of Pharmacology, AIIMS Bathinda. Faculty, research scholars and students from different departments of the university and nearby institutes participated in the workshop. Prof. Anjana Munshi and Dr Ravindresh Chhabra from Central University of Punjab and Dr Paramdeep Singh from AIIMS, Bathinda were the organizers of this workshop.

At the outset, Prof. Anjana Munshi, Director, Research and Development Cell, CUPB, welcomed the participants and introduced the distinguished speakers. She mentioned that the purpose of organizing this workshop is to familiarise the participants with the concept of systematic reviews, and provide hands-on training for carrying out advanced meta-analysis.
While interacting with participants, Dr. Tarun Goyal stated that the advent of evidence-based medicine has increased the demand for systematic methods to analyze and synthesize clinical evidence. When it comes to the search for the best available clinical evidence, randomized control trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses are considered the "gold standard."

Dr. Rachna Rohila explained that a systematic review comprises a study that collects, critically appraises, and synthesizes all the available evidence to answer a specifically formulated research question. A meta-analysis, on the other hand, uses statistical methods to pool results from various independent studies, to generate an overall estimate of the phenomenon studied and provide the significance of the pooled outcome. It is important to note that not all systematic reviews include the component of meta-analysis. Therefore, these terms cannot be used interchangeably.

During this workshop, the distinguished speakers shared details regarding how to choose a research question using the PICOT Framework; choose MESH terms for conducting a literature search; protocol writing and registration in Prospero; data extension for the given research question; qualitative assessment using the risk of bias assessment tool; installation of a user friendly review manager software, RevMan 5; Quantitative assessment using RevMan Interpretation of results through sub-group and sensitivity analysis.

In the afternoon session, the participants got hands-on experience performing meta-analysis and constructing the forest and funnel plots, along with the interpretation of results.

Towards the end, Dr. Paramdeep Singh expressed his gratitude towards distinguished speakers. He thanked everyone for making this workshop a success.