Problems with Early Systematic Reviews: The Case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Pregnancy

Rapid dissemination of findings regarding the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its potential effects on pregnancy is crucial to support understanding and development of recommendations for optimization of obstetrics care. However, much of the current studies published are in the form of case reports or case series which can be prone to biases. Other factors also further complicate attempts to analyze data accurately. Hence, this evaluation hopes to highlight some of these problems and provide suggestions to help clinicians mitigate and make reasonable conclusions when reading the abundant yet limited body of evidence when furthering their research efforts.

Studies regarding COVID-19 and pregnancy were searched on databases such as PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, the Cochrane Library. Manual search of references of select articles were also undertaken. Apart from summarizing study limitations identified by authors, the characteristics of current literature and systematic reviews were also evaluated to identify potential factors affecting accuracy of subsequent analysis.

Factors such as innate biasness in study design of current literature, duplicate reporting, differing inclusion criteria of systematic reviews, scarce data, inadequate follow-up period and limitations of systematic reviews have been shown to hinder the ability for accurate data extrapolation.

Unless additional studies are conducted in identified areas of data scarcity and a common list of factors affecting accuracy of data analysis are taken into account when developing recommendations, discrepancies will continue to arise and accurate data analysis and valid systematic reviews will be precluded.