The Oxford symposium revealed that substantial progress is being made in all of the currently vulnerable elements of the technique. The Oxford meeting ended with a debate on the proposition that narrative reviews can be misleading and that their continued publication should be discouraged. In some fields, for example, the conclusions of unsystematic reviews seem to depend on the financial affiliations of the reviewers. First, the distinction is commonly false. Narrative reviews tend to be broad in range, sometimes mixing natural history, epidemiology, physiology, molecular medicine, treatment, and predictions about future prospects.
Systematic reviews are more specific and narrowly focused.
Each type of review serves different needs. Second, we should encourage reviews that incorporate the patient's perspective, including the potential harm of treatment, quality of life, what care is locally available, and the health costs. Current systematic reviews rarely do this. Third, narrative reviews encourage new thinking. In a review of the experimental evidence on angina, Yellon and colleagues speculated that ischaemia might, paradoxically, be cardioprotective.