A proposed framework to guide evidence synthesis practice for meta-analysis with zero-events studies

Meta-analysis has been widely used to synthesis evidence for studies of the same topic, through either a fixed-effect or a random-effect scheme, as an effort to obtain more precise and comprehensive results for decision-making. While for meta-analysis of rare events, researchers often face the problem of how to deal with zero-events. Zero-events generally occur when the risk of events is low, the sample size is small, or the follow-up period is short - these are frequently seen with safety outcomes [1-2].

Source: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology - February 12, 2021 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Chang Xu, Luis Furuya-Kanamori, Liliane Zorzela, Lifeng Lin, Sunita Vohra Tags: Original Article Source Type: research