382,384 papers found

INTRODUCTION: Postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF) is the most common complication following cardiac surgery, and randomised clinical trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews have been conducted to compare and evaluate different pharmacological interventions for preventing POAF. This study aimed to explore the effect o…

INTRODUCTION: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among individuals with diabetes. Despite the beneficial effects of antidiabetic drugs (ADDs) in terms of lowering haemoglobin A1c, several ADDs have been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular events. Given the high prevalence…

Multivariate meta-analysis, which jointly analyzes multiple and possibly correlated outcomes in a single analysis, is becoming increasingly popular in recent years. An attractive feature of the multivariate meta-analysis is its ability to account for the dependence between multiple estimates from the same study. Howeve…

INTRODUCTION: Meta-analyses of clinical trials often provide sufficient information for decision-makers to evaluate whether chance can explain apparent differences between interventions. Interpretation of the magnitude and importance of treatment effects beyond statistical significance can, however, be challenging, par…

INTRODUCTION: There are no data summarising the epidemiology of pulmonary hypertension (PH) among adults residing in Africa. Establishment of accurate epidemiological data on PH in this region may guide decision-making toward interventions to curb the burden of PH in Africa. The aim of this systematic review is to dete…

INTRODUCTION: Selecting a suitable wound dressing for patients with partial-thickness burns (PTBs) is important in wound care. However, the comparative effectiveness of different dressings has not been studied. We report the protocol of a network meta-analysis designed to combine direct and indirect evidence of wound d…

BACKGROUND: As eHealth interventions prove both efficacious and practical, and as they arguably overcome certain barriers encountered by traditional face-to-face treatment for chronic pain, their number has increased dramatically in recent times. However, there is a dearth of research that focuses on evaluating and com…

BACKGROUND: It is believed increasingly that patients with severe Crohn's disease are best treated early with biological therapy, which may ameliorate subsequent disease course and diminish long-term complications. However, we cannot predict currently which new presentations of Crohn's disease are destined to develop s…

BACKGROUND: Network meta-analysis methods, which are an extension of the standard pair-wise synthesis framework, allow for the simultaneous comparison of multiple interventions and consideration of the entire body of evidence in a single statistical model. There are well-established advantages to using individual patie…

Biomarkers that are identified from a single study often appear to be biologically irrelevant or false positives. Meta-analysis techniques allow integrating data from multiple studies that are related but independent in order to identify biomarkers across multiple conditions. However, existing biomarker meta-analysis m…

Meta-analyses are considered as an important pillar of evidence-based medicine. The aim of this review is to describe the main principles of a meta-analysis and to use examples of head and neck oncology to demonstrate their clinical impact and methodological interest. The major role of individual patient data is outlin…

BACKGROUND: It is often assumed that differences in the efficacy of treatments between countries (or regions) will be neither negligible nor minor and therefore cannot be overlooked when assessing the potential benefit of treatments in one country (or region) on the basis of trials conducted in another country (or regi…

Nutrition science frequently produces conclusions that appear inconsistent or context dependent, contributing to uncertainty in dietary recommendations. Many debates framed around questions such as whether a specific food is "healthy" implicitly assume that foods exert intrinsic effects independent of dietary context.…

The presence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in complicated skin and soft structure infections (cSSSI) is associated with greater health risks and economic costs to patients. There is concern that MRSA is becoming resistant to other "gold standard" treatments such as vancomycin, and there is disag…

Several meta-analyses investigating the efficacy of-3 PUFA in alleviating depression symptoms have reported conflicting findings. In the present study, we aimed to perform an umbrella meta-analysis to provide a definite conclusion. A comprehensive systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane…

OBJECTIVES: The massive growth in the publication of meta-analyses may cause redundancy and wasted efforts. We performed a metaepidemiologic study to evaluate the extent of potential redundancy in published meta-analyses in genetic epidemiology. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Using a sample of 38 index meta-analyses of gen…

In health technology assessment (HTA), beside network meta-analysis (NMA), indirect comparisons (IC) have become an important tool used to provide evidence between two treatments when no head-to-head data are available. Researchers may use the adjusted indirect comparison based on the Bucher method (AIC) or the matchin…

BACKGROUND: With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technologies, many datasets on the same biological subject are generated. A meta-analysis is an approach that combines results from different studies on the same topic. The random-effects model in a meta-analysis enables the modeling of differences be…

Methods for meta-analyzing single-case designs (SCDs) are needed to inform evidence-based practice in clinical and school settings and to draw broader and more defensible generalizations in areas where SCDs comprise a large part of the research base. The most widely used outcomes in single-case research are measures of…

Systematic reviews (SRs) of anatomical studies may include a meta-analysis (MA) that provides weighted averages as pooled estimates of prevalence. The relationship of the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) to the inferior thyroid artery (ITA) or its branches has been assessed in two published SRs, one without MA of 32 stu…