PRISMA is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. PRISMA primarily focuses on the reporting of reviews evaluating the effects of interventions, but can also be used as a basis for reporting reviews with objectives other than evaluating interventions (e.g. evaluating etiology, prevalence, diagnosis or prognosis).
From Prisma-statement.org
PRISMA is a REPORTING guideline, which means review manuscripts can be written based on the PRISMA requirements.
Tool to encourage all review authors to report the same information in the same way. Remember, an article may conform to PRISMA reporting guidelines in the checklist, but you will still need to read the complete article to determine if the review was well-done.
Tool for charting the flow of information through the different phases of a review. It details the number of records identified, included and excluded, and the reasons for exclusions.
Combined, these items make it easier to read, understand, and compare reviews.
The PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for new systematic reviews which included searches of databases, registers and other sources (downloadable from the bottom of this box) includes options to report items found through web and citation searching, those shared by colleagues, and other various sources of information. These options make this template the most useful for reporting most common non-systematic review searches.
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If you use the flow diagram, you will need to cite it. Below is an example of an acceptable citation for PRISMA.
