Systematic review and meta-analysis with its result interpretation by forest plot
International Journal of Development Research
Systematic review and meta-analysis with its result interpretation by forest plot
Received 12th March, 2018; Received in revised form 17th April, 2018; Accepted 20th May, 2018; Published online 30th June, 2018.
Copyright © 2018, Gyan P. Singh and Pradeep Tandon. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Systematic review and meta-analysis is now considered the highest level of the evidence in the field of research. The results from multiple studies may yield the different estimates of the treatment effects as sometimes a randomized clinical trial may fail to give a clear and robust result. In systematic review by identifying all published and unpublished information in a given clinical area and pooling the results in a statistically valid fashion by performing meta-analysis, it is possible to arrive at a more precise estimate of treatment effect. The presentation illustrates all pertinent steps in performing the systematic review and meta-analysis with an example. The result interpretation is also elaborated with the forest plot in which we can observe the result of individual study separately as well as the pooled result of all quantitative studies selected for the meta-analysis. The newer statistical entity like confidence interval, odds ratio and heterogeneity are also touched upon. The objective of presentation is to sensitize the scholars regarding latest strategy of research so that we can generate the precise and trusted evidences for the transparent health delivery system.
