When generating guidelines, quality of evidence is frequently reported in tabulated form capturing several domains, for example, study design, risk of bias and heterogeneity. Increasingly, this is done using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach. As assimilating large amount of tabulated data across several comparisons and outcomes spread over many pages (sometimes hundreds) is not easy, there is a need to present evidence summaries in a more effective way. A graphic display plotting the several domains used in evidence grading on equiangular spokes starting from the same point, the data length of each spoke proportional to the magnitude of the quality, succinctly captures tabulated information. These plots allow easy identification of deficiencies, outliers and similarities in evidence quality for individual and multiple comparisons and outcomes, paving the way for their routine use alongside tabulated information.
Introduction
Improving healthcare through evidence-based practice and policy hinges on decision-making informed by summarised research findings. Deciphering the salience of findings is not straightforward particularly when there are many competing interventions whose effects are evaluated on several outcomes ranging from critical to unimportant and when the strength of the evidence may vary for each. For generating recommendations, the quality …
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