Applying Appraisal Tools in Aphasia Systematic Reviews: A Tutorial.

While PRISMA 2020 is a tool to guide preparation of SRs, to examine SR quality, the AMSTAR 2 is the tool of choice. Applied to two current aphasia treatment SRs, the AMSTAR 2 demonstrates that although both SRs were thorough, thoughtful summaries of a body of aphasia treatment literature, they did not achieve high ratings for methodological quality. Clinicians reading SRs are advised to familiarize themselves with quality assessment tools to assure that an SR meets expected criteria to document internal and external validity of the SR process, so resulting findings can be confidently applied for patients with aphasia.