ABSTRACT
Introduction: Systematic reviews of economic evaluations are useful for synthesizing economic evidence about health interventions and for informing evidence-based decisions.
Areas covered: As there is no detailed description of the methods for performing a systematic review of economic evidence, this paper aims to provide an overview of state-of-the-art methodology. This is laid out in a 5-step approach, as follows: step 1) initiating a systematic review; step 2) identifying (full) economic evaluations; step 3) data extraction, risk of bias and transferability assessment; step 4) reporting results; step 5) discussion and interpretation of findings.
Expert commentary: The paper aims to help inexperienced reviewers and clinical practice guideline developers, but also to be a resource for experts in the field who want to check on current methodological developments.
Declaration of interest
The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.