Laparoscopic versus open appendectomy in patients with suspected appendicitis: a systematic review of meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials

Table 2 AMSTAR ratings

AMSTAR criteria	Golub 1998	Meynaud-Kraemer 1999	Temple 1999	Benett 2007	Li 2010	Liu 2010	Sauerland 2010	Wei 2011	Ohtani 2012
A priori design	o	o	+	o	o	o	+	o	o
Duplicate study selection and extraction	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	o	o
Literature search comprehensive	-	-	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Status of publication used as criteria	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Excluded/included list provided	-	+	+	+	+	-	+	-	-
Study characteristics provided	+	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Quality assessed/presented	+	+	-	+	+	+	+	+	+
Quality impacted conclusions	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Heterogeneity tested before combining	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Publication bias assessed	o	-	-	-	+	+	+	+	-
Conflict stated	-	-	-	-	+	-	+	+	-

ISSN: 1471-230X