382,291 papers found

Cluster randomization trials have become a very attractive research strategy, particularly for the evaluation of health service interventions. The need to conduct meta-analyses of such trials is also becoming more common. However, as with cluster randomization trials in general, such analyses raise special methodologic…

Clustering functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time series has emerged in recent years as a possible alternative to parametric modeling approaches. Most of the work so far has been concerned with clustering raw time series. In this contribution we investigate the applicability of a clustering method applied to…

Subgroup analysis is frequently used to investigate heterogeneity in meta-analysis. Subgroup data are not always available, and researchers should record what data were available for each trial. If data were not available, and it is known that the subgroup data were collected, the potential for selective reporting shou…

Meta-analysis is commonly used in reviews of the effectiveness of medical technologies, but this approach has not been used in direct support of guidelines development groups. This paper describes the approach of the North of England Guidelines Development Project in describing the evidence using meta-analyses that wer…

The statistical issues in clinical trials where clusters, communities or groups rather than individuals are randomized are often not fully appreciated. In this paper we discuss the design and analysis of trials in which pairs of clusters are randomized in the context of one recent trial, the British Family Heart Study.…

The use of meta-analyses or overviews to combine formally the results of related randomised clinical trials is becoming increasingly common. However the distinction between analyses based on information extracted from the published literature and those based on collecting and reanalysing updated individual patient data…

This paper contains a proposition related to the publication of meta-analyses of clinical trials. We consider the situation where the results of a number of trials are summarized by a common or typical odds ratio. We show that stating such an odds ratio as the summary of evidence from a number of trials can be misleadi…

To evaluate the variability in the reported accuracy of the exercise electrocardiogram (ECG) for predicting severe coronary disease, meta analysis was applied to 60 consecutively published reports comparing exercise-induced ST depression with coronary angiographic findings. The 60 reports included 62 distinct study gro…

This study used meta-analysis, an analytical technique that uses raw data from previous researchers, to estimate the efficacy of screening for oral cancer with tolonium chloride (TCl). TCl, a vital blue dye, selectively stains acid tissue components such as DNA and RNA and has been used for more than 20 years by surgeo…

The effect of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy on knee osteoarthritis (KOA) has been contradictory in previous meta-analyses. This umbrella review on published meta-analyses aimed to investigate the effect of MSCs and PRP on KOA. We systematically searched Scopus, PubMed, and Cochran…

INTRODUCTION: There are many injection methods for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis, but there is no comprehensive comparison, based on the fixed effect model. METHODS: According to the retrieval strategy, we searched randomized controlled trials (RCTs) randomly from PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, the China…

BACKGROUND: The target of this study is to summarize the association between the serum lipoprotein levels and neurological function in patients with acute ischemic stroke. METHODS: A comprehensive search of Cochrane Library, PUBMED, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China National Kno…

It is widely recognised that findings from experimental studies should be replicated before their conclusions are accepted as definitive. In many research areas, synthesis of results from multiple studies is carried out via systematic review and meta-analysis. Some fields are also moving away from null hypothesis signi…

BACKGROUND: The lifetime prevalence of major depression is estimated to affect 17% of the population and is considered the second largest health-care problem globally in terms of the number of years lived with disability. The effects of most antidepressant treatments are poor; therefore, exercise has been assessed in a…

The objective of this meta-analysis is to assess the impact of LH supplementation in women undergoing in vitro fertilization/ intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI) with gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist protocol. No significant difference in outcomes between LH supplementation and r-FSH alone in wo…