Meta-analysis in Clinical Research: Principles and Procedures

This book provides conceptual information on the various processes involved in meta-analysis. It examines the importance of meta-analysis for the analyses of clinical data to draw a valid conclusion using suitable software. The initial sections of the book introduce meta-analysis, how to perform a systematic literature review (SLR), quality assessment of studies, extraction, and analysis of data. The subsequent section of the book contains information on advanced topics including, meta-regression, network meta-analysis, issues, mistakes, and future perspectives. In summary, the book provides a statistical method for combining the results of different studies on the same topic and resolving conflicts among studies. This book is written with the intent to allow a wide range of readers including students, researchers, and health care professionals, including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and paramedical, and is also helpful for a beginner who would like to do a meta-analysis.