Narrative Review
A literature review that summarises and interprets research on a topic without the structured, reproducible methodology of a systematic review. Narrative reviews provide useful overviews but are more susceptible to author bias in study selection and interpretation.
Technical Context
Narrative reviews (also called traditional reviews or scoping reviews) provide expert-synthesised overviews of a topic. They differ from systematic reviews in: search strategy (may not be comprehensive or reproducible), study selection (author-selected rather than criteria-based), quality assessment (may not formally assess bias), and synthesis (qualitative rather than quantitative). Narrative reviews are useful for: providing broad overviews of emerging fields (e.g. 'research peptides in tissue repair'), contextualising clinical data within biological frameworks, educational purposes, and hypothesis generation. However, they are susceptible to selection bias (authors may preferentially cite studies supporting their perspective) and should not be relied upon as definitive evidence for clinical decision-making. Major medical journals publish both narrative and systematic reviews, but regulatory bodies preferentially weight systematic reviews.