Normand S L
Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Stat Med. 1999 Feb 15;18(3):321-59. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0258(19990215)18:3<321::aid-sim28>3.0.co;2-p.
Meta-analysis involves combining summary information from related but independent studies. The objectives of a meta-analysis include increasing power to detect an overall treatment effect, estimation of the degree of benefit associated with a particular study treatment, assessment of the amount of variability between studies, or identification of study characteristics associated with particularly effective treatments. This article presents a tutorial on meta-analysis intended for anyone with a mathematical statistics background. Search strategies and review methods of the literature are discussed. Emphasis is focused on analytic methods for estimation of the parameters of interest. Three modes of inference are discussed: maximum likelihood; restricted maximum likelihood, and Bayesian. Finally, software for performing inference using restricted maximum likelihood and fully Bayesian methods are demonstrated. Methods are illustrated using two examples: an evaluation of mortality from prophylactic use of lidocaine after a heart attack, and a comparison of length of hospital stay for stroke patients under two different management protocols.
荟萃分析涉及合并来自相关但独立研究的汇总信息。荟萃分析的目标包括增强检测总体治疗效果的效力、估计与特定研究治疗相关的获益程度、评估研究之间的变异性大小，或识别与特别有效的治疗相关的研究特征。本文为有数理统计背景的任何人提供了一篇关于荟萃分析的教程。讨论了文献检索策略和综述方法。重点在于估计感兴趣参数的分析方法。讨论了三种推断模式：最大似然法；限制最大似然法和贝叶斯法。最后，展示了使用限制最大似然法和完全贝叶斯法进行推断的软件。通过两个例子对方法进行了说明：对心脏病发作后预防性使用利多卡因的死亡率评估，以及两种不同管理方案下中风患者住院时间的比较。
