392,304 papers found

INTRODUCTION: Media and digital technologies shape adolescent development across interconnected online and offline contexts, offering opportunities for learning and connection while also exposing young people to risks that can affect wellbeing. Wellbeing-focused media literacy interventions aim to support young people…

The I-squared index was proposed in 2002 as a measure to help understand the consistency of study results in a meta-analysis. It was developed to overcome some of the limitations of existing measures, principally the chi-squared test for heterogeneity and the between-study variance as estimated in a random-effects meta…

Publication bias is a major threat to the validity of a meta-analysis, resulting in overestimated effect sizes. We propose a generalization and improvement of the publication bias method p-uniform called p-uniform*. P-uniform* improves upon p-uniform in three ways, as it (i) entails a more efficient estimator, (ii) eli…

Graphical displays are often utilised for high-quality reporting of meta-analyses. Previous work has presented augmentations to funnel plots that assess the impact that an additional trial would have on an existing meta-analysis. However, decision-makers, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in…

This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of Bayesian meta-analysis methods for estimating odds ratios (ORs), with a focus on the impact of heterogeneity and prior distribution choices under varying conditions. Recognizing the limitations of frequentist approaches, especially in small-sample or rare-event scenario…

The feasibility of network meta-analysis depends on several factors, one of which is the validity of the transitivity assumption that posits no systematic differences in the distribution of effect modifiers across treatment comparisons within a connected network. However, evaluating transitivity is complex for relying…

BACKGROUND: Traditional statistical methods assume normally distributed continuous variables, making them unsuitable for analysis of prevalence proportions. To address this problem, two commonly utilized variance-stabilizing transformations (logit and Freeman-Tukey) are empirically evaluated in this study to provide cl…

Network meta-analysis (NMA) extends pairwise meta-analysis to compare multiple treatments simultaneously by combining "direct" and "indirect" comparisons of treatments. The availability of individual participant data (IPD) makes it possible to evaluate treatment effect moderation and to draw inferences about treatment…

INTRODUCTION: Teenage pregnancy is a major public health problem with huge consequences for maternal health and pregnancy outcomes. More than 90% of these live births are estimated to occur in developing countries. The objective of this review is to estimate the prevalence of teenage pregnancy and its associated factor…

AIMS: This paper examines network meta-analysis (NMA) as a methodological advancement in nursing research and discusses considerations for interpreting and applying NMA results in clinical practice. DESIGN AND METHODS: Methodological discussion. RESULTS: The NMA method simultaneously evaluates multiple interventions…

INTRODUCTION: The prevalence of overweight or obesity among patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy is on the rise. The utilisation of robotic assistance has the potential to enhance the feasibility of performing minimally invasive pancreaticoduodenectomy in this particular group of patients who are at a higher ris…

At the top of the evidence-based pyramid, systematic reviews stand out as the most powerful, synthesizing findings from numerous primary studies. Specifically, a quantitative systematic review, known as a meta-analysis, combines results from various studies to address a specific research question. This review serves as…

AIM: To recognize, appraise and summarize the research evidence that has explored the results of pelvic floor muscle training on female sexual function. DESIGN: Systematic review and possible meta-analysis. METHODOLOGY: Between September and October 2022, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and Sc…

Meta-analysis has been established as an effective approach to combining summary statistics of several genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, the accuracy of meta-analysis can be attenuated in the presence of cross-study heterogeneity. We present sPLINK, a hybrid federated and user-friendly tool, which perfor…

BACKGROUND: Network meta-analysis (NMA) is a widely used tool to compare multiple treatments by synthesizing different sources of evidence. Measures such as the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA) and the P-score are increasingly used to quantify treatment ranking. They provide summary scores of treatmen…

OBJECTIVES: To develop efficient approaches for fitting network meta-analysis (NMA) models with time-varying hazard ratios (such as fractional polynomials and piecewise constant models) to allow practitioners to investigate a broad range of models rapidly and to achieve a more robust and comprehensive model selection s…

Meta-analytic methods are powerful resources to summarize the existing evidence concerning a given research question and are widely used in many academic fields. Meta-analyzes can also be used to study sources of heterogeneity and bias among results, which should be considered to avoid inaccuracies. Many of these sourc…

Traditional visualization in meta-analysis uses forest plots to illustrate the combined treatment effect, along with the respective results from primary trials. While the purpose of visualization is clear in the pairwise setting, additional treatments broaden the focus and extend the results to be illustrated in networ…

INTRODUCTION: Migraine is a primary cause of disability worldwide, particularly affecting young adults and middle-aged women. Although multiple clinical trials and systematic reviews have suggested that acupuncture could be effective in treating acute migraine attacks, the methodologies in academic studies and commonly…

OBJECTIVE: Network meta-analysis (NMA) is a new method to compare the effects of multiple treatments in dental care. We examined whether published NMA follow the key methodological reporting recommendations, the PRISMA Extension Statement. DESIGN: Collection of published systematic reviews with NMA in dental care DATA…