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Meta-research in geriatric medicine: a survey of the Italian Society of Hospital and Community Geriatrics (SIGOT)

The need for major information in meta-research (i.e. the part of medicine interested in systematic reviews [SRs] and meta-analyses [MAs]) is increasing. In the last years we are observing an exponential rate of publications as SRs/MAs in geriatric medicine. In order to better assess the interest in meta-research, we proposed a survey to know the knowledge and the needs in meta-research in geriatrics. A short survey (about 5 minutes) was freely available in the Italian Society of Hospital and Community Geriatrics (SIGOT) website and diffused in social networks. The survey was available during the entire 2019. The survey regards demographic information, previous research activities and the knowledge of the participant on meta-research. Altogether, 148 participants mainly men (=65.5%) and mainly aged 36 to 44 years and working in hospital from all Italian regions completed the survey. Responders read more than 20 articles in the previous year (=58.1%), including 10-20 SRs/MAs (25%). Many respondents (41.9%) had published >20 articles during their life. At the same time, a consistent part of the respondents recognized the importance of metaresearch for clinical practice and almost all the participants recognized that metaresearch has changed their daily clinical approach to the patient. Almost all the participants would like to have more training in meta-research suggesting that SIGOT should organize training courses for metaresearch in geriatric medicine. In conclusion, our survey showed that the interest in SRs/MAs is high, whilst the knowledge is still limited suggesting that education is needed to fill the gap in this field.