The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Meta-Analyses of Randomized Controlled Trials
Abstract
A new type of research, termed meta-analysis, attempts to analyze and combine the results of previous reports. We found 86 meta-analyses of reports of randomized controlled trials in the English-language literature. We evaluated the quality of these meta-analyses, using a scoring method that considered 23 items in six major areas--study design, combinability, control of bias, statistical analysis, sensitivity analysis, and application of results. Only 24 meta-analyses (28 percent) addressed all six areas, 31 (36 percent) addressed five, 25 (29 percent) addressed four, 5 (6 percent) addressed three, and 1 (1 percent) addressed two. Of the 23 individual items, between 1 and 14 were addressed satisfactorily (mean +/- SD, 7.7 +/- 2.7). We conclude that an urgent need exists for improved methods in literature searching, quality evaluation of trials, and synthesizing of the results.
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Cites
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Self-citation
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Cited by
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: the PRISMA statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & for the PRISMA Group (2009) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.b2535 · Cited by 83,823
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement
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“In 1987, Sacks and colleagues (6) evaluated the adequacy of reporting of 83 meta-analyses on 23 characteristics in six domains.”
Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA Statement.
(2009) · PubMed Central · Cited by 44,859
Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & the PRISMA Group* (2009) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/0003-4819-151-4-200908180-00135 · Cited by 37,554
Liberati, A., Altman, D. G., Tetzlaff, J., Mulrow, C., Gøtzsche, P. C., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Clarke, M., Devereaux, P. J., Kleijnen, J., & Moher, D. (2009) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000100 · Cited by 28,164
“Of note, a survey of systematic reviews indexed in MEDLINE in November 2004 found that reports of protocol use had increased to about 46% [3] from 8% noted in previous surveys [49].”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Sacks, H. S., Berrier, J., Reitman, D., Ancona-Berk, V. A., & Chalmers, T. C.
- Venue
- New England Journal of Medicine
- Publisher
- Massachusetts Medical Society
- Published
- 1987-02-19
- Volume
- 316
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 450-455
- ISSN
- 0028-4793 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-4406
- OpenAlex
- W2067550511
- Cited by
- 1,250
- References
- 5
- FWCI
- 90.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Sacks, H. S., Berrier, J., Reitman, D., Ancona-Berk, V. A., & Chalmers, T. C. (1987). Meta-Analyses of Randomized Controlled Trials. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm198702193160806
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
