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I see on page 3 of the paper it says 118 studies were excluded for "Wrong Outcomes" but I couldn't find any elaboration on what was meant by this. Were papers t

I see on page 3 of the paper it says 118 studies were excluded for "Wrong Outcomes" but I couldn't find any elaboration on what was meant by this. Were papers tossed out based on arbitrary criteria? This would suggest a bias, no?

Sebguer 6y ago
Outcomes in research papers refer to the specific values that were being measured. In this case, "wrong outcomes" means that the studies that were discarded were not measuring FOR the values that they're comparing across. "Outcomes of interest were risk of transmission (ie, WHOdefined confirmed or probable COVID-19, SARS, or MERS) to people in health-care or non-health-care settings by those infected; hospitalisation; intensive care unit admission; death; time to recovery; adverse effects of interventions; and contextual factors such as acceptability, feasibility, effect on equity, and resource considerations related to the interventions of interest. However, data were only available to analyse intervention effects for transmission and contextual factors. Consistent with WHO, studies generally defined confirmed cases with laboratory confirmation (with or without symptoms) and probable cases with clinical evidence of the respective infection (ie, suspected to be infected) but for whom confirmatory testing either had not yet been done for any reason or was inconclusive."