Assessing the robustness of results from clinical trials and meta-analyses with the fragility index.

ABSTRACT: The fragility index has been increasingly used to assess the robustness of the results of clinical trials since 2014. It aims at finding the smallest number of event changes that could alter originally statistically significant results. Despite its popularity, some researchers have expressed several concerns about the validity and usefulness of the fragility index. It offers a comprehensive review of the fragility index's rationale, calculation, software, and interpretation, with emphasis on application to studies in obstetrics and gynecology. This article presents the fragility index in the settings of individual clinical trials, standard pairwise meta-analyses, and network meta-analyses. Moreover, this article provides worked examples to demonstrate how the fragility index can be appropr

SUBMITTER: Lin L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9974556 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature