A systematic review is a overview of research litterature, in a given field of research, based on certain exclusion criteria. Litterature is searched for systematically in several research databases, and a team of researchers are involved in selecting and quality evaluating the studies.

A meta-analysis is a way to do an overall analysis based on all the included studies in a review.

Thus, many systematic reviews present meta-analyses as a way to sum up results from all included studies, but if, studies are of different designs, different measures of exposures/outcomes, and poor research quality, a qualitative presentation of study results may be prefered.

Meta-analysis is therefore done when making a systematic review, but it is not a requirement. Meta-analyses without a systematic review should not be made, as important studies may have been missed.

I hope that this answered your question.

A systematic review is a overview of research litterature, in a given field of research, based on certain exclusion criteria. Litterature is searched for systematically in several research databases, and a team of researchers are involved in selecting and quality evaluating the studies.

A meta-analysis is a way to do an overall analysis based on all the included studies in a review.

Thus, many systematic reviews present meta-analyses as a way to sum up results from all included studies, but if, studies are of different designs, different measures of exposures/outcomes, and poor research quality, a qualitative presentation of study results may be prefered.

Meta-analysis is therefore done when making a systematic review, but it is not a requirement. Meta-analyses without a systematic review should not be made, as important studies may have been missed.

I hope that this answered your question.

Agree with Jesper Fabricius , meta-analysis is a part of systematic review but systematic review can be done without meta-analysis.

“A systematic review is a review in which there is a comprehensive search for relevant studies on a specific topic, and those identified are then appraised and synthesized according to a predetermined and explicit method.” - Article Guides for reading and interpreting systematic reviews: I. G...

Meta-analysis can be seen as a quantitative evidence synthesis from the studies included in systematic review. But, narrative synthesis of systematic review without meta-analysis is not uncommon particularly if meta-analysis is unsuitable or inappropriate. In this regard, recent paper by Campbell et al 2020 provide more reporting guidelines to for Synthesis Without Meta-analysis (SWiM) - https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.l6890

Hope this helps.

Check this paper

Ahn, E., & Kang, H. (2018). Introduction to systematic review and meta-analysis. Korean journal of anesthesiology, 71(2), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.4097/kjae.2018.71.2.103

Distinguishing between a systematic review and meta-analysis is essential to understand the role each plays in presenting and analyzing data and estimates of treatment effects. . A thorough understanding of the similarities and differences between these two research methodologies is needed to appropriately evaluate the quality of conclusions emerging from such studies. The systematic review allows the researcher to synthesize and critically appraise a number of studies in a specific context to provide evidence-based conclusions. Comparatively, atop the hierarchical chain of evidence lies the meta-analysis, in which a systematic review is performed and then statistical methods are employed to quantitatively pool the results of a selected number of studies in a specific context. This design is a robust method of combined analysis and is therefore deemed the highest level of evidence when pooling high-quality randomized controlled trials. Understanding and appreciating the methodological differences in these two designs are elemental in planning, implementing, and evaluating high-quality research