The presentation of results should identify how many studies were identified and selected. There should be a narrative description of the search decision process accompanied by the search decision flowchart. This section should include the type and number of papers identified by the search and the number of studies that were included and excluded from the review. A flowchart of this is shown in Figure 4.1. A flowchart of search results
The results section should be framed in such a way that as a minimum, the following fields are described or given consideration by the reviewers in preparing their systematic review report:
Papers: Number of studies identified, number of retrieved papers, number of appraised papers, number of excluded papers and overview of reasons for exclusion, and number of included papers.
The results section then focuses on providing a detailed description of the results of the review. Where a systematic review has several foci, the results should be presented in a logical, structured way, relevant to the specific questions. The role of tables and appendices should not be overlooked. Adding extensive detail on studies in the results section may ‘crowd’ the findings, making them less accessible to readers, hence the use of tables, graphs and in text reference to specific appendices is encouraged.