New Delhi, March 07: The Faculty of Dentistry, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organized short term training program “Certificate in Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis in Dental Research” 4th -6th March, 2024 with partial funding from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The event was inaugurated on 4th March, 2024, by the Chief Guest, Hon’ble Offg. Vice Chancellor, Prof. Eqbal Hussain and Guest of Honour, Prof. Harpreet Grewal, Head, Dental Sciences, UCMS, Delhi. The training program was organised by Faculty of Dentistry under the able guidance of Dean Faculty of Dentistry, Prof. Keya Sircar with her team, Prof. Priyanka Kapoor, Prof. Aman Chowdhry, Prof. Deepika B Popli, and Prof. Harneet Kaur. The success of the course could be measured by extensive participation of over 35 delegates from most premier institutes of the country including AIIMS, Delhi and Jodhpur, PGIDS Rohtak, and RGUHS, Karnataka amongst many more. They were mentored from eminent speakers from National Institutes including AIIMS & ICMR, Delhi, PGI Chandigarh, AMU, Manav Rachna, and Mahatma Gandhi, Jaipur as well as international faculty from Utrecht University, Netherlands and Puthisastra University, Cambodia.
The inauguration started with a welcome address by the Dean, Prof. Keya Sircar, who welcomed the dignitaries, speakers from India and abroad, and participants from premier institutes across India. She portrayed the vision of this training programme strengthening the critical thinking skill to be an extension of the Viksit Bharat Abhiyan and to fall within the realm of the mandates of NEP policy, 2020. She briefed the gathering about the importance of evidence based dental research and scope of this certificate course in clinical practice as well as academia. She outlined the contents to be covered in the three-day training program highlighting the innovations done by the Faculty of Dentistry in this domain including the copyrights for MQCT tool and mindmap of systematic reviews.
The Guest of Honour, Prof Harpreet Grewal, in her address complimented the organising team for conceptualising and executing this one-of-a-kind training module in evidence-based research at a national level, a topic which is still nascent in the field of dentistry. She also expressed deep interest in this field and mentioned that it should be promoted at all teaching institutes.
Prof. Eqbal Hussain, Hon’ble Offg. Vice Chancellor, JMI extended his warm wishes and support for the training program which is being organised for the first time at a national level. He expressed the importance of quality of evidence, and its application to the real-world challenges, including the best healthcare interventions for a particular scenario. He congratulated the team for keeping a futuristic vision and excellent array of lectures and workshops by eminent experts in this field.
A beautifully compiled souvenir book was released on the occasion by the dignitaries. The success of the event could be measured by extensive pan India participation of faculty, PGs, and event general dental practitioners, who were ready to embark upon a journey of evidence based research in dentistry.
The inaugural event ended with a vote of thanks by the convener, Prof Priyanka Kapoor who expressed her sincere gratitude to dignitaries, esteemed speakers, and delegates who made this event a huge success.
The first day of the event saw deliberations by Prof Priyanka Kapoor on introduction to systematic review and meta-analysis where a roadmap to conduct these reviews was explained. This was followed by lecture on identifying study designs by Prof Pragati Kaurani who briefed the audience about selecting the right study design for primary research taking examples from dentistry. It was complemented by formulation of a research question workshop by Dr Abhishek Mehta based on PICO format. Dr Deepika Mishra took an excellent workshop on search strategy formulation and its application in PubMed. This was followed by workshop on Rayyan software where Dr Rajiv Balachandran explained its use in data screening, duplicate removal, and citation transfer. A workshop on PROSPERO registration by Prof Deepika B Popli and Prof Harneet Kaur on PROSEPRO registration motivated the participants to register reviews prior to performing the review. Towards the end, Prof Aman Chowdhry took a workshop on PRISMA where steps of data screening were explained.
The second day included themes that graduated from systematic reviews to meta-analysis. It started with a brief introduction to interpretation of forest plot by Prof Priyanka Kapoor. It was followed by a workshop on Risk of Bias tool identification and application in randomised and non-randomised studies, taken by Dr Nitesh Tiwari. Subsequently, Dr Arpit Gupta explained the statistical tools in systematic reviews. Further, Dr Anand Marya explained the quantitative and qualitative synthesis of data. The day ended with RevMan lecture by Prof Harneet Kaur followed software demonstration by Prof Priyanka Kapoor and Prof Harneet Kaur.
The third day included advanced workshops related to systematic review. The grading of quality of systematic review was taken up by Dr Atif Mohammad, followed by grading of evidence by Prof. Alpa Gupta in a workshop format. Thereafter, the difference between Cochrane and normal systematic reviews was explained by Prof Sumit Malhotra. This was followed by two online sessions, one by Prof. Prathap Tharyan on network Meta-Analysis and the other by Dr Rens Van de Schoot on artificial intelligence in systematic reviews. This was followed by a lecture on manuscript writing using IMRaD by Prof. Deepika B Popli and a workshop on bibliometric analysis was taken by Prof Aman Chowdhry where he detailed the use of tool VOSviewer on both Scopus and PubMed platforms.
The participants were extremely satisfied with the course which was depicted in the feedback form which was shared at the end of each day. The training course ended with valedictory program which was attended by Dean, Prof Keya Sircar and the organising team. They conferred the certificates to the participants for successfully completing the short term training program “Certificate in Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis in Dental Research”, and also to the organising committee for their valuable contribution to the success of the program.
