Laparoscopic Surgery for Crohn’s Disease: A Meta-Analysis—The Author’s Reply

Excerpt

To the Editor—We thank Dr. Wille-Jørgensen for the comments. We realize that this form of analysis, with inclusion of both randomized and nonrandomized studies, is not ideal and will inevitably result in bias. However, this is a topic of considerable interest to the authors, and given the paucity of randomized trials on this topic and the wealth of information available in nonrandomized trials, we believed that this would be the best alternative. This aspect was discussed in the DISCUSSION section. We acknowledge the suggestion by Dr. Wille-Jørgensen to resolve this issue by performing a senstivity analysis. …