From Systematic Reviews to Clinical Recommendations for Evidence-Based Health Care: Validation of Revised Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (R-AMSTAR) for Grading of Clinical Relevance

Table 3: Systematic Review Ranking Based on R-AMSTAR Scores

PICO	Paper	R-AMSTAR^a	%ile	Rank^b
PTSD	1	32.50	83	B
	2	33.00	85	B
	3	32.50	83	B
	4	39.00	100	A
	5	32.00	82	B
	6	25.50	65	D
	7	33.00	85	B
	8	29.50	76	C
	9	30.00	77	C
	5	35.00	100	A
	11	30.00	77	C

RA	1	28.00	80	B
	2	33.50	96	A
	3	31.50	90	A
	4	32.00	91	A

^aThe values listed in the table correspond to the total R-AMSTAR scores listed in Tables 1 & 2 respectively for the PTSD and the RA bibliome

^bBased on the criteria of excellence of systematic reviews that resulted in the 11 domains examined by the AMSTAR, the overall score on the R-AMSTAR, which is revised only to the extent that it produces a quantification of the assessments of these domains, reveals the possibility to assign a grade of systematic review quality and clinical relevance, based on the criteria of the top percentile of the scores reflecting an A paper, and so on. The rankings are, for obvious reasons, relative strictly to the systematic reviews examined in response to the specific P.I.C.O. question, and thus pertain to a fixed (rather than random) interpretative model.