When Is It Appropriate to Publish a Meta-Analysis in Cardiovascular Drugs and Therapy?

Excerpt

The method of meta-analysis has been in existence for hundreds of years in various scientific disciplines, but it was only in the twentieth century that clinical scientists began to address medical questions by combining results from different randomized clinical trials and observational studies [1]. The method of summarizing results from different studies has become the formalized method known as meta-analysis, which has been defined as “a statistical analysis of results from separate studies, examining sources of differences in results among studies, and leading to a quantitative summary of the results if the results are judged sufficiently similar or consistent to support such synthesis [2].” This is especially important when the sample size for individual studies is small leading to uncertainty about the effect size and wide confidence intervals pertaining to the treatment. The statistical methods for conducting meta-analyses have evolved over time and continue to do so. …