Summarizing the evidence

8 important questions on Summarizing the evidence

What are narrative reviews?

Expert in the field summarizes evidence and makes recommendations

What are systematic reviews?

Rigorous reviews of the evidence bearing on specific clinical questions. They are systematic because they summarize original research following a scientificaly based plan that has been decided in advance

What is publication bias?

Is the tendency for published studies to be systematically different from all completed studies of a question. In general they are more likely to be positive
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What are funnel plots?

Graphical way of detecting bias. Effect size is plotted against some measure of the studies precision.

What is a forest plot?

Shows the point estimate of effectiveness and confidence interval for each study in the review

What is patient level meta-analysis

Gathering data of each individual patient, but is difficult in practice

What are the two models for meta-analysis?

Fixed effect model - all studies, study the exact same question
Random effect model - assumes that studies address somewhat different question but still closely related

What are strengths and weaknesses of meta-analyses?

Can establish the presence of an effect, in greater statistical power

The tempation to pool dissimilar studies, this results in misleading estimate of effects

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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