TABLE 3.
Quality of evidence in included SRs with GRADE.
| Included SRs | Outcome | No. of RCT (patient intervention/control group) | Certainty assessment | Certainty | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk of bias | Inconsistency | Indirectness | Imprecision | Publication bias | ||||
| Ma et al. (2017) | NIHSS | 12 (632/641) 18 (816/809) |
Serious a Serious a | Serious b Serious b | Not serious Not serious | Serious c Serious c | Undetected Undetected |
Very low Very low |
| CSS | ||||||||
| ADL | 5 (214/212) | Serious a | Not serious | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| GCS | 2 (72/68) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low | |
| Infarct size | 2 (99/99) | Serious a | Not serious | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| Li et al. (2013) | Mortality | 3 (119/118) | Not serious | Not serious | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Moderate |
| NIHSS | 3 (212/217) | Serious a | Not serious | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| ESS | 4 (217/211) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low | |
| CSS | 6 (295/274) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low | |
| CSS | 1 (48/49) | Serious a | Undetected | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| CSS | 1 (32/28) | Serious a | Undetected | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| CSS | 2 (63/60) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low | |
| CSS | 1 (27/26) | Serious a | Undetected | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Low | |
| Lin et al. (2010) | GCS | 4 (236/223) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low |
| Xu et al. (2005) | Mortality | 3 (119/108) | Not serious | Not serious | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Moderate |
| Mortality | 1 (50/46) | Not serious | Undetected | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Moderate | |
| Chen and Gu, (2017) | CSS | 6 (300/294) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low |
| Wang et al. (2006) | CSS | 2 (168/158) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low |
| Liao et al. (2019) | GCS | 4 (268/265) | Serious a | Serious b | Not serious | Serious c | Undetected | Very low |
a
Hiding or blinding was not used.
b
The difference of point effect size between studies was large, confidence interval overlap between studies was little, the heterogeneity test was significant, or the I2 was large.
c
Small number of events, or confidence interval was too wide.