Preparing and interpreting meta-analysis in clinical research.
Meta-analysis is a procedure to systematically research and collect published and (ideally) unpublished randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of treatments and quantitatively summarise their results, in order to obtain an objective assessment of efficacy. Collaboration between statisticians and clinical experts in the field of pathology addressed by the treatment is needed for performing reliable meta-analyses. "Typical" meta-analysis can be refined as "cumulative" meta-analysis, where the pooled assessment of treatment effect is repeated every time a new trial is added to a set of trials, and by meta-analysis "on individual patient data", i.e. using information on each patient included in every trial. Due to the emergence of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), the role of meta-analysis is expanding. EBM is a way of practising medicine by integrating individual clinical expertise with the most reliable evidence from the medical literature. Meta-analysis is suggested as the most convenient and reliable source of data for practising EBM. EBM is taking advantage from the Cochrane Collaboration, an international network of experts performing, updating and disseminating meta-analyses of important treatments, according to a common model and established procedures.
Pagliaro
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Istituto di Medicina Generale e Pneumologia, Università degli Studi di Palermo.
D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012106:Research