Estimating the reference range from a meta-analysis.

ABSTRACT: Often clinicians are interested in determining whether a subject's measurement falls within a normal range, defined as a range of values of a continuous outcome which contains some proportion (eg, 95%) of measurements from a healthy population. Several studies in the biomedical field have estimated reference ranges based on a meta-analysis of multiple studies with healthy individuals. However, the literature currently gives no guidance about how to estimate the reference range of a new subject in such settings. Instead, meta-analyses of such normative range studies typically report the pooled mean as a reference value, which does not incorporate natural variation across healthy individuals in different studies. We present three approaches to calculating the normal reference range of a subj

SUBMITTER: Siegel L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7881056 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature