Table 3.
Quality of the Included Studies Assessed by Using Downs and Black Checklist.
| Study | Study Design | Downs and Black Checklist | Quality | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reporting (11) | External Validity (3) | Bias (7) | Confounding (6) | Power (1) | Total (28) | |||
| Brocq et al. (2002) 22 | Prospective | 9 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 21 | Good |
| Conrozier et al. (2003) 23 | Prospective | 10 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 21 | Good |
| Caglar-Yagci et al. (2005) 24 | Not mentioned | 9 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 21 | Good |
| Migliore et al. (2005) 25 | Prospective | 10 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 22 | Good |
| Migliore et al. (2005) 26 | Not mentioned | 9 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 20 | Good |
| Tikiz et al. (2005) 27 | Prospective | 10 | 3 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 24 | Good |
| van den Bekerom et al. (2008) 28 | Prospective | 7 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 20 | Good |
| Conrozier et al. (2009) 29 | Prospective | 10 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | 22 | Good |
| Migliore et al. (2009) 30 | Prospective | 9 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 24 | Good |
| Richette et al. (2009) 31 | Prospective | 10 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 0 | 25 | Good |
| Battaglia et al. (2013) 32 | Prospective | 8 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 24 | Good |
| Di Sante et al. (2016) 33 | Prospective | 10 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 22 | Good |
| Doria et al. (2017) 34 | Prospective | 10 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 25 | Good |
| Abate and Salini (2017) 35 | Retrospective | 8 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 16 | Fair |
| Clementi et al. (2018) 36 | Prospective | 10 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 24 | Good |