Evidence of and recommendations for non-pharmacological interventions for common geriatric conditions: the SENATOR-ONTOP systematic review protocol

INTRODUCTION: Non-pharmacological therapies for common chronic medical conditions in older patients are underused in clinical practice. We propose a protocol for the assessment of the evidence of non-pharmacological interventions to prevent or treat relevant outcomes in several prevalent geriatric conditions in order to provide recommendations.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The conditions of interest for which the evidence about efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions will be searched include delirium, falls, pressure sores, urinary incontinence, dementia, heart failure, orthostatic hypotension, sarcopaenia and stroke. For each condition, the following steps will be undertaken: (A) prioritising clinical questions; (B) retrieving the evidence (MEDLINE, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL and PsychINFO will be searched to identify systematic reviews); (C) assessing the methodological quality of the evidence (risk of bias according to the Cochrane method will be applied to the primary studies retrieved from the systematic reviews); (D) developing recommendations based on the evidence (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) items-risk of bias, imprecision, inconsistency, indirectness and publication bias-will be used to rate the overall evidence and develop recommendations).

DISSEMINATION: For each target condition, at least one systematic overview concerning the evidence of non-pharmacological interventions will be produced and published in peer-reviewed journals.