文档介绍：Statistics 542 Introduction to Clinical Trials Meta Analysis
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Meta-Analysis
Alternatives? Occasionally
Complementary? Yes
Meta-Analysis
Combination of similar studies using similar subjects and similar treatments and similar outcomes
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Figure 2 Odds Ratios and 95% Confidence Limits for Various Studies and a Pooled Estimate
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New Method of Analyzing Health Data Stirs Debate by Lawrence K. Altman
Increasing use of a controversial statistical method to evaluate medical therapies and surgical procedures is beginning to affect profoundly the care of pregnant women and patients with cancer, heart disease and many other common conditions.
The method, known as meta-analysis promises to plan an increasingly important role in determining health risks, environmental hazards and national policy on payment for medical care.
Backers say technique can draw big, reliable conclusions from small, inconsistent findings.
Meta-analysis is a term derived from the Greek meaning an analysis that is more comprehensive. The larger numbers obtained by combining studies provide a greater statistical power than any of the individual studies. Researchers are often able to draw more reliable inferences or new conclusions from the combined results than from the smaller studies that may be inconclusive individually.
In earlier applications of meta-analysis, researchers evaluated intelligence quotients, government social welfare programs and many other topics. Meta-analysis has come to medicine late, but “it is now undergoing a boom in popularity,” said Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers, a distinguished physician of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Boston and a pioneer in methodology.
The method involves an analysis of previous analyses. It combines the results of a wide range of existing smaller studies and then applies one of several statistical techniques to discover more precisely what is known from previous research. It may also produce a unified result from div