title: Novel presentational approaches were developed for reporting network meta-analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To present graphical tools for reporting network meta-analysis (NMA) results aiming to increase the accessibility, transparency, interpretability, and acceptability of NMA analyses.
  
  
  METHODS
  The key components of NMA results were identified based on recommendations by agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (United Kingdom). Three novel graphs were designed to amalgamate the identified components using familiar graphical tools such as the bar, line, or pie charts and adhering to good graphical design principles.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Three key components for presentation of NMA results were identified, namely relative effects and their uncertainty, probability of an intervention being best, and between-study heterogeneity. Two of the three graphs developed present results (for each pairwise comparison of interventions in the network) obtained from both NMA and standard pairwise meta-analysis for easy comparison. They also include options to display the probability best, ranking statistics, heterogeneity, and prediction intervals. The third graph presents rankings of interventions in terms of their effectiveness to enable clinicians to easily identify "top-ranking" interventions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The graphical tools presented can display results tailored to the research question of interest, and targeted at a whole spectrum of users from the technical analyst to the nontechnical clinician.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Adrian Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK; Division of Clinical Trials and Epidemiological Sciences, National Cancer Centre Singapore, 11 Hospital Drive, 169610, Singapore. Electronic address: sht10@leicester.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sze Huey
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Adrian Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
authors.forename: Nicola J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Cooper
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Adrian Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
authors.forename: Sylwia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bujkiewicz
authors.affiliation: School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, 39 Whatley Road, Bristol BS8 2PS, UK.
authors.forename: Nicky J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Welton
authors.affiliation: School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Canynge Hall, 39 Whatley Road, Bristol BS8 2PS, UK.
authors.forename: Deborah M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Caldwell
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Adrian Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK.
authors.forename: Alexander J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Sutton
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D058028:Research Report
keywords: Graphical displays, presentational tools, summary forest plot, ranking, probability best; Network meta-analysis