Heart Surgery PSP Question Verification form

The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Adult Heart Surgery

Please describe the scope of the PSP

This PSP covers all research concerning adult cardiac surgery, with the exclusion of heart transplants, paediatric heart surgery and congenital heart surgery.

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

First the questions were reviewed by the steering group. Out of scope questions were removed, and similar questions were merged where this was considered appropriate. A number of sources (listed below) were then searched to assess if any of the identified questions had already been answered. The search strategy was developed with advice from a research information advisor. All the identified information from the search results was reviewed, and the abstracts of all potentially relevant articles were collated into one document. This was then searched for key terms, one question at a time. Relevant literature was collated for each question, and the results were discussed with the steering group to decide if enough current evidence was available to categorise a question as answered.

Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

Systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Database, and relevant clinical guidelines for heart surgery.

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
NICE Guidelines
SIGN Guidelines
AHA Guidelines
STS Guidelines
ESC Guidelines
EACTS Guidelines
ESA Guidelines

What search terms did you use?

A separate search strategy was developed for each evidence source using the terms cardiac, heart, CPB, cardiopulmonary bypass, aorta, coronary, CABG, revascularization, valve, mitral, and aortic.

Generic searches using the above terms were carried out to cover most of the identified questions. Tailored searches were also developed for a number of questions which covered topics that we felt could be missed by the generic searches. Our full search strategy is published in our evidence checking documentation.

Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations

The searches were limited to 2013 onwards, as evidence prior to this will be out of date and likely to need updating.

Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking

The searches were primarily carried out by Riccardo Abbasciano, with help from Selina Lock, Florence Lai and Clare Gillies.

On what date was the question verification process completed?

12/02/19

Any other relevant information

None