Which description best fits a narrative review?

Which description best fits a narrative review?

• A. Focused question with pre-registered protocol and rigorous search
• B. Quantitative pooling of data with meta-analysis
• C. General or focused topic with summary of findings; may lack explicit search methods
• D. Head-to-head comparison of therapies

Answer: (C)

A narrative review provides a broad or focused overview of a topic and summarizes what is known in a descriptive, story-like form, often without a clearly defined search strategy or methods. This aligns with the description that the review covers a general or focused topic and offers a summary of findings, while not necessarily detailing explicit search methods. Unlike this, systematic reviews follow a pre-registered protocol and use a rigorous, transparent search and study-selection process to minimize bias; meta-analyses go further by quantitatively pooling data; and head-to-head therapy comparisons refer to direct comparisons in primary studies rather than an overarching literature synthesis. Narrative reviews are useful for gaining context and understanding current perspectives, but they may be more subjective and less reproducible due to the lack of explicit search methods.

A narrative review provides a broad or focused overview of a topic and summarizes what is known in a descriptive, story-like form, often without a clearly defined search strategy or methods. This aligns with the description that the review covers a general or focused topic and offers a summary of findings, while not necessarily detailing explicit search methods. Unlike this, systematic reviews follow a pre-registered protocol and use a rigorous, transparent search and study-selection process to minimize bias; meta-analyses go further by quantitatively pooling data; and head-to-head therapy comparisons refer to direct comparisons in primary studies rather than an overarching literature synthesis. Narrative reviews are useful for gaining context and understanding current perspectives, but they may be more subjective and less reproducible due to the lack of explicit search methods.