Health consequences of electronic cigarettes - Protocol for an umbrella review

Summary

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), both with or without nicotine, have increased in popularity in many countries. There is wide variation in product types and contents. The products are sold under the assumption that e-cigarettes may be less harmful to health than highly unhealthy conventional tobacco cigarettes. The need to systematically review existing evidence on consequences to human health from e-cigarettes is high and increasing.

On commission from the Ministry of Health and Care Services in Norway we will systematically evaluate health consequences of use of and exposure to e-cigarette aerosols (secondhand exposure). The evaluation will be based on scientific methods for collection and assessments of systematic reviews of health consequences associated with use of e-cigarettes.

In order to identify relevant reviews, we will conduct a systematic search for literature. Titles and abstracts will be considered according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. References will be screened by two researchers independently, first by title and abstract and subsequently in full text, for inclusion and exclusion.

The quality of included systematic reviews will be assessed using AMSTAR-2. For each health outcome, we will use the most up to date systematic review of high quality to summarise health consequences. If the review has not graded the quality of the evidence, then we will use the GRADE approach to do so.