Appendix Table 6. Assessment of selected quality criteria in 7 studies of post-stroke cognitive impairment or dementia.
| Author Year | Was AF the primary exposure of interest? |
Inclusion & exclusion criteria clearly stated? |
Was ECG used as one of the methods for AF ascertainment? |
Method of Outcome ascertainment |
Temporality clear? |
Lost to follow up, % |
Adjustment | Number of quality criteria met* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inzitari 1998 (37) | No | No | Yes | Superior | Yes | >10% | Multivariate | 4 |
| Barba 2000 (38) | No | Yes | Yes | Superior | Yes | >10% | Multivariate | 5 |
| Altieri 2004 (39) | No | Yes | Unclear | Superior | Yes | <10% | Multivariate | 5 |
| Zhou 2004 (40) | No | Yes | Unclear | Superior | Yes | >10% | Multivariate | 4 |
| Tang 2006 (41) | No | Yes | Yes | Acceptable | Yes | >10% | Multivariate | 4 |
| Mizrahi 2012 (42) | Yes | Yes | No | Acceptable | No | N/A | Multivariate | 3 |
| Khan 2012 (43) | No | Yes | Unclear | Acceptable | No | N/A | Multivariate | 2 |
Studies are ordered based on the publication year.
The purpose of the numbers reported in this column is to provide an overview of how studies compare to each other in terms of methodological quality. We made every effort to include the most comprehensive and relevant quality criteria; however, there is no standard basis for quality assessment of observational studies. Although we find it unlikely that the classification of studies would dramatically change by using different quality criteria. It should be kept in mind that these numbers could vary depending on the items chosen for quality assessment (54, 55). Therefore, readers are encouraged to focus on each individual quality criterion rather than the overall quality scores in the assessment of bias.