Falk Hoffmann

Cochrane reviews are known to be a high‐quality source of evidence synthesis supporting health care decisions. In a recently conducted study, we analyzed the trends in epidemiology and reporting of published systematic reviews over the last 20 years. This sample of 1132 systematic reviews included 84 Cochrane reviews. We have learned several peculiarities of Cochrane reviews that are worth being discussed in more detail due to their practical implications. Methodologists, clinicians and health care professionals should be aware of these limitations: (1) Cochrane reviews are not identified as systematic reviews in title, (2) Cochrane reviews do not always follow PRISMA reporting guidelines, (3) Some updates are only available via the Cochrane Library, and (4) Indexing of Cochrane reviews in PubMed may be suboptimal.