One category on the Trip Database is ‘ongoing systematic reviews’. This content is taken from the PROSPERO database of ongoing systematic reviews.  If you’re not familiar with PROSPERO this is how the site describes itself:

“PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome. Key features from the review protocol are recorded and maintained as a permanent record. PROSPERO aims to provide a comprehensive listing of systematic reviews registered at inception to help avoid duplication and reduce opportunity for reporting bias by enabling comparison completed review with what was planned in the protocol.”

To maintain the records in Trip a monthly download of new systematic reviews registered on PROSPERO is sent.  Two new records caught my eye this month:

• A rapid review and qualitative synthesis of patients’ experiences of long-term follow-up care after bariatric surgery
• A rapid review of the relationship between rumination and positive affect, auditory hallucinations and the socioeconomic status in healthy adults, adults with bipolar disorder or psychosis

I had no idea that PROSPERO included rapid reviews and I’m delighted to see them.  Historically, one criticism of rapid reviews is the notion that they are not registered anywhere (the fact that it took nearly 20 years to start PROSPERO after the systematic review explosion appears to be beside the point).  While I’m unsure what criteria PROSPERO use; the inclusion criteria states:

“Scoping reviews and literature reviews are not eligible for inclusion…”

But there is no mention of rapid reviews.  There’s an email I need to send then!

But a search on PROSPERO for rapid reviews finds the following:

So, there you go – rapid reviews can be found in PROSPERO – what a great discovery!