It seems that dissemination of the main results of the Picard review and their implementation into practice and methodological guidelines has not been sufficient.
The guidelines have improved methodological reporting in RSA studies, but adherence to these guidelines is still relatively low.
We investigated whether the RSA guidelines have resulted in improved methodological reporting in clinical RSA studies of hip and knee arthroplasty.
Several guidelines have been developed to assess the methodological quality and reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, 26 30 31 32 33 and according to all these guidelines, retrieving all relevant studies is crucial for the success of every systematic review.
Our study demonstrated that the guidelines have clearly had a positive effect on the methodological quality of RSA publications, but there is still room for improvement.
The guidelines have since changed.
Nearly half (43) of the studies published after the guidelines demonstrated a high methodological quality and adhered at least partially to 10 of the 13 guidelines, whereas less than one-fifth (11) of the studies published before the guidelines had the same methodological quality.
Moreover, due to our strict methodological guidelines, the survey had to be cancelled and repeated if weather conditions exceeded specific thresholds (in temperature and wind force), which resulted in additional working time (repeated visit of the test area).
