166 Chapter 7 systematic reviews, as stated in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Diagnostic Test Accuracy (41, 42). SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND ASSESSMENT OF THE CERTAINTY OF THE EVIDENCE For diagnostic accuracy of individual index tests, we will assess the certainty of the evidence according to the GRADE guidance 21 (43, 44). We will evaluate risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency and imprecision, but will not assess publication bias for the reasons mentioned in Assessment of reporting bias. We will produce summary of findings tables for each index test, but these will be limited to one outcome only (bilateral tubal occlusion). We will present the number of studies/participants, study design, certainty assessment (risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency and imprecision), summary of findings (numbers and 95% confidence intervals for both the index test and the reference standard on true positives, false negatives, true negatives and false positives), and certainty of evidence in the summary of findings tables. For comparative diagnostic accuracy of different index tests, we will evaluate the certainty of the evidence according to the GRADE guidance 31 (45). We will evaluate the same four domains as mentioned above for diagnostic accuracy of individual index tests. We will not consider indirect comparisons (between‐study comparisons), given that evidence resulting from indirect comparisons is likely to be of low certainty and the methodological work in this area is under development (45). We will also produce summary of findings tables for comparative diagnostic accuracy if more than two studies are included for each comparison, but will be limited to one outcome only (bilateral tubal occlusion). We will present the number of studies/participants, study design, certainty assessment (risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency and imprecision), summary of findings (numbers and 95% confidence intervals for both index tests on true positives, false negatives, true negatives, false positives and the differences of these between the two tests), and certainty of evidence in the summary of findings tables. The supplementary data to this manuscript can be found online at the Cochrane library for study protocols.
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