Validation of the Reliability of Machine Translation for a Medical Article From Japanese to English Using DeepL Translator

Effectiveness of dexmedetomidine during surgery under general anaesthesia on patient-centred outcomes: a systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis protocol

INTRODUCTION

Dexmedetomidine is a promising pharmaceutical strategy to minimise opioid use during surgery. Despite its growing use, it is uncertain whether dexmedetomidine can improve patient-centred outcomes such as quality of recovery and pain.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We will conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis following the recommendations of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews. We will search MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL, Web of Science and CINAHL approximately in October 2023. We will include randomised controlled trials evaluating the impact of systemic intraoperative dexmedetomidine on patient-centred outcomes. Patient-centred outcome definition will be based on the consensus definition established by the Standardised Endpoints in Perioperative Medicine initiative (StEP-COMPAC). Our primary outcome will be the quality of recovery after surgery. Our secondary outcomes will be patient well-being, function, health-related quality of life, life impact, multidimensional assessment of postoperative acute pain, chronic pain, persistent postoperative opioid use, opioid-related adverse events, hospital length of stay and adverse events. Two reviewers will independently screen and identify trials and extract data. We will evaluate the risk of bias of trials using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool (RoB 2.0). We will synthesise data using a random effects Bayesian model framework, estimating the probability of achieving a benefit and its clinical significance. We will assess statistical heterogeneity with the tau-squared and explore sources of heterogeneity with meta-regression. We have involved patient partners, clinicians, methodologists, and key partner organisations in the development of this protocol, and we plan to continue this collaboration throughout all phases of this systematic review.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Our systematic review does not require research ethics approval. It will help inform current clinical practice guidelines and guide development of future randomised controlled trials. The results will be disseminated in open-access peer-reviewed journals, presented at conferences and shared among collaborators and networks.

PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER

CRD42023439896.

The Use of Machine Translation for Outreach and Health Communication in Epidemiology and Public Health: Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Culturally and linguistically diverse groups are often underrepresented in population-based research and surveillance efforts, leading to biased study results and limited generalizability. These groups, often termed "hard-to-reach," commonly encounter language barriers in the public health (PH) outreach material and information campaigns, reducing their involvement with the information. As a result, these groups are challenged by 2 effects: the medical and health knowledge is less tailored to their needs, and at the same time, it is less accessible for to them. Modern machine translation (MT) tools might offer a cost-effective solution to PH material language accessibility problems.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review aims to systematically investigate current use cases of MT specific to the fields of PH and epidemiology, with a particular interest in its use for population-based recruitment methods.

METHODS

PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, ACM Digital Library, and IEEE Xplore were searched to identify articles reporting on the use of MT in PH and epidemiological research for this PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews)-compliant scoping review. Information on communication scenarios, study designs and the principal findings of each article were mapped according to a settings approach, the World Health Organization monitoring and evaluation framework and the service readiness level framework, respectively.

RESULTS

Of the 7186 articles identified, 46 (0.64%) were included in this review, with the earliest study dating from 2009. Most of the studies (17/46, 37%) discussed the application of MT to existing PH materials, limited to one-way communication between PH officials and addressed audiences. No specific article investigated the use of MT for recruiting linguistically diverse participants to population-based studies. Regarding study designs, nearly three-quarters (34/46, 74%) of the articles provided technical assessments of MT from 1 language (mainly English) to a few others (eg, Spanish, Chinese, or French). Only a few (12/46, 26%) explored end-user attitudes (mainly of PH employees), whereas none examined the legal or ethical implications of using MT. The experiments primarily involved PH experts with language proficiencies. Overall, more than half (38/70, 54% statements) of the summarizing results presented mixed and inconclusive views on the technical readiness of MT for PH information.

CONCLUSIONS

Using MT in epidemiology and PH can enhance outreach to linguistically diverse populations. The translation quality of current commercial MT solutions (eg, Google Translate and DeepL Translator) is sufficient if postediting is a mandatory step in the translation workflow. Postediting of legally or ethically sensitive material requires staff with adequate content knowledge in addition to sufficient language skills. Unsupervised MT is generally not recommended. Research on whether machine-translated texts are received differently by addressees is lacking, as well as research on MT in communication scenarios that warrant a response from the addressees.