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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 7, Issue 5 (Suppl)
Epidemiology (Sunnyvale), an open access journal
ISSN: 2161-1165
Epidemiology 2017
October 23-25, 2017
EPIDEMIOLOGY & PUBLIC HEALTH
October 23-25, 2017 | Paris, France
6
th
International Conference on
SEX/GENDER ANALYSIS IN COCHRANE REVIEWS OF INFECTIONS ASSOCIATED TO
MEDICAL DEVICES IS UNCOMMON
Jesus Lopez-Alcalde
a
a
Madrid Cochrane Associate Center, Spain
H
ealthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are commonly associated with medical devices such as catheters, mechanical
ventilation, and feeding tubes. These HAIs increase morbidity, mortality and healthcare costs and their control continues
to be an unresolved issue worldwide. Evidence suggests that medical device epidemiology shows sex/gender differences. These
sex and gender differences are often not considered in research design, study implementation and reporting, which limits the
applicability of the research findings to decision making. We aim to describe the extent to which sex/gender based analysis
(SGBA) is considered in Cochrane reviews of interventions for preventing medical device related infections in the healthcare
setting. This study is a methodological review. We searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for active reviews
published before January 1, 2017. We screened 6694 records and included those reviews evaluating any intervention attempting
to prevent infections related to medical devices in a healthcare setting. To extract key information about sex and gender we
considered the domains of the ‘Sex and Gender in Systematic Reviews Planning Tool’ (SGSR-PT). The preliminary analysis
of the 25 included reviews showed that SGBA was absent. The reviews met no SGSR-PT criteria. Sex and gender terms were
used interchangeably in most of the included reviews. The background never described the relevance of sex/gender to the
review question. The inclusion/exclusion criteria for studies in the reviews never considered sex/gender differences. Data were
never disaggregated by sex. There were no subgroup analyses by sex, and no review highlighted any sex/gender differences as
research gaps. SGBA was absent in Cochrane reviews on preventing medical device related infections. This raises concerns
about the value and applicability of these reviews and highlights that there is much room for improvement to support informed
decision making in this field .
Epidemiology (Sunnyvale) 2017, 7:5(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2161-1165-C1-018