Data extraction
Data were extracted by the three authors and synthesised into summary
tables presenting information about study characteristics, methods and
outcomes of interest. For the part covering perceptions of teratogenic
risk, the authors aimed to examine whether the results of the included
studies indicated a true (proper) estimation of the teratogenic risk or
not. If not, the perceived estimations of the teratogenic risk were
examined to see if they were higher than the true risk (over-estimated)
or lower than the true risk (under-estimated). Therefore, the numeric
value of the perceived teratogenic risk extracted from the results
section of each paper was compared to the true value of the teratogenic
risk that was extracted either from the methods or the results section.
The authors followed the method shown in Figure 1 to assign the
perceived teratogenic risk of every medication included in the review
into one of three categories: properly-estimated, over-estimated, or
under-estimated.