A Brief Explanation of Umbrella Review
An umbrella review is a review of systematic reviews or meta-analyses. They may also be called overviews of reviews, reviews of reviews, summaries of systematic reviews, or syntheses of reviews. It compiles all the evidence from existing reviews on a topic to give a high level overview. Umbrella reviews are among the highest levels of evidence currently available in medicine. An umbrella review is commonly conducted when there are multiple competing interventions for a condition. An overview of reviews about each of these interventions can be useful in determining how to best translate the evidence into practice. By summarizing information from multiple overview articles, umbrella reviews make it easier to review the evidence and allow for comparison of results between each of the individual reviews. Like many other reviews, the aim of an umbrella study is to determine what is known on a topic, what remains unknown, and recommendations are made for what requires further research