Table 2.
GRADE evidence profile
|
Patient or population: young children (<18 years old) Settings: interventions were delivered in the communist health system in Turkey, Canada, Netherlands, Taipei (China) and the USA Intervention: socially assistive robots Control: minimal typical distraction including digital and non-digital techniques | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Certainty assessment | № of patients | Effect | Certainty | Importance | ||||||||
| № of studies | Study design | Risk of bias | Inconsistency | Indirectness | Imprecision | Other considerations | Intervention | Control | Relative(95% CI) | Absolute(95% CI) | ||
| Pain (assessed with: FPS-R, FLACC; Scale from: 0 to 10) | ||||||||||||
| 5 | randomised trials | seriousa | not serious | not serious | seriousb,c | none | 175 | 172 | - | SMD 0.02 SD lower(0.81 lower to 0.78 higher) | ⨁⨁◯◯Low | CRITICAL |
| Anxiety (assessed with: FIS, VAS-A, mYPAS; Scale from: 0 to 10) | ||||||||||||
| 4 | randomised trials | seriousd | not serious | not serious | seriousb | none | 247 | 239 | - | SMD 0.36 SD lower(0.64 lower to 0.09 lower) | ⨁⨁◯◯Low | IMPORTANT |
| Distress (assessed with: BAADS, OSBD-R; Scale from: 0 to 10) | ||||||||||||
| 3 | randomised trials | seriouse | not serious | not serious | seriousb,f | none | 89 | 89 | - | SMD 0.67 SD lower(1.04 lower to 0.3 lower) | ⨁⨁◯◯Low | IMPORTANT |
| Fear (assessed with: CFS; Scale from: 0 to 10) | ||||||||||||
| 2 | randomised trials | seriousg | not serious | not serious | seriousb,h | none | 51 | 62 | - | MD 0.38 higher(0.06 lower to 0.82 higher) | ⨁⨁◯◯Low | IMPORTANT |
CI confidence interval, MD mean difference, SMD standardised mean difference
Explanations
a. Five included studies failed to be blind to the outcome assessors, and one study did not report the patients' demographic data. Thus, most of studies were judged to be at some concerns
b. The forest plot showed a wide confidence interval(CI)
c. Five studies with only 347 participants were included
d. One study did not characterized the randomization method it applied, and the other study did not report the patients' demographic data. Thus, two out of the four were judged to be at high risks of bias
e. Three studies failed to be blind to the outcome assessors, thus being judged as high risks of bias
f. Three studies with only 178 participants were included
g. Tho studies failed to be blind to the outcome assessors, thus being judged as high risks of bias
h. Two studies with only 113 participants were included