Borrowing of strength from indirect evidence in 40 network meta-analyses.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Network meta-analysis (NMA) is increasingly being used to synthesize direct and indirect evidence and help decision makers simultaneously compare multiple treatments. We empirically evaluate the incremental gain in precision achieved by incorporating indirect evidence in NMAs.

Study design and setting

We performed both network and pairwise meta-analyses on 40 published data sets of multiple-treatment comparisons. Their results were compared using the recently proposed borrowing of strength (BoS) statistic, which quantifies the percentage reduction in the uncertainty of the effect estimate when adding indirect evidence to an NMA.

Results

We analyzed 915 possible treatment comparisons, from which 484 (53%) had no direct evidence (BoS = 100%). In 181 compariso

SUBMITTER: Lin L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6338506 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature