Living systematic reviews are a relatively new approach to keeping the evidence in systematic reviews current by frequent surveillance and updating. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Evidence-based Practice Center Program commissioned a living systematic review of plant-based treatments for chronic pain management and a series of related white papers. The first white paper described challenges and practical and methodological considerations encountered during the first year of the living review. The second white paper focused on practical considerations for adapting scope and communicating findings. This white paper examined published articles excluded after full-text review, to better understand the broader evidence base on plant-based treatments for chronic pain.
Although the literature base continues to expand, many published articles are excluded due to failure to meet eligibility criteria. The most frequent reasons for exclusion of articles at the full-text review stage were study designs that lacked comparison groups and evaluation of populations with pain conditions that were ineligible for inclusion, such as pain related to advanced cancer, multiple sclerosis, of mixed pain conditions without distinguishing patients with chronic pain. Some articles were excluded at the full-text stage because the intervention consisted of cannabis products that were not specifically identified or products that were outside the scope of the review.