Table 2.
Assessment of data quality for each included study listed from highest to lowest quality
| Type of RT | Criteria authors | ≥20 patients | ≥50% at the first follow-up | Corrected to norms | Definition provided | Adjusted for baseline | Parallel tests | Diversity NCA | Overall quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WBRT | Mehta et al. [7, 18, 38, 74] | + | + | + | + | + | − | + | 6 good |
| Gondi et al. [26] | + | + | − | + | + | + | +/– | 5.5 good | |
| Westover et al. [41] | + | + | − | +/– | + | + | + | 5.5 good | |
| Saito et al. [28] | + | + | − | + | + | + | − | 5 good | |
| Deng et al. [35] | + | + | − | + | + | − | + | 5 good | |
| Zhu et al. [40] | + | + | − | + | + | − | + | 5 good | |
| Zhan et al. [39] | + | + | − | + | + | − | 4 medium | ||
| Onodera et al. [25] | + | + | + | − | − | − | + | 4 medium | |
| Cheng et al. [34] | + | + | − | − | − | − | + | 3 medium | |
|
| |||||||||
| SRS | Chang et al. [29] | − | + | + | + | + | + | + | 6 good |
| Brown et al. [32] | + | + | + | + | + | − | + | 6 good | |
| Chang et al. [31] | + | + | − | + | + | − | + | 5 good | |
| Habets et al. [30, 43] | + | − | + | + | + | − | + | 5 good | |
| Minniti et al. [42] | + | + | − | + | + | + | − | 5 good | |
| Onodera et al. [25] | − | + | + | − | − | − | + | 3 medium | |
| Kirkpatrick et al. [24] | + | − | − | − | − | − | +/– | 1.5 low | |
NCA, neurocognitive assessment; RT, radiotherapy; SRS, stereotactic radiosurgery; WBRT, whole-brain radiotherapy. + Indicates 1 point awarded for that criterion. − Indicates no points. +/– 0.5 points.