The Peto odds ratio is a well-known effect measure in meta-analysis of binary outcomes. For pairwise comparisons, the Peto odds ratio estimator can be severely biased in the situation of unbalanced sample sizes in the two treatment groups or large treatment effects. In this publication, we evaluate Peto odds ratio estimators in the setting of…

Standard meta-analysis methods are vulnerable to bias from incomplete reporting of results (both publication and outcome reporting bias) and poor study quality. Several alternative methods have been proposed as being less vulnerable to such biases. To evaluate these claims independently we simulated study results under a broad range of conditions…

The effect sizes of studies included in a meta-analysis do often not share a common true effect size due to differences in for instance the design of the studies. Estimates of this so-called between-study variance are usually imprecise. Hence, reporting a confidence interval together with a point estimate of the amount of between-study variance…

Network meta-analysis (NMA) is gaining popularity for comparing multiple treatments in a single analysis. Generalized linear mixed models provide a unifying framework for NMA, allow us to analyze datasets with dichotomous, continuous or count endpoints, and take into account multiarm trials, potential heterogeneity between trials and network…

The motivating example for this paper comes from a distributed health data network, the International Consortium of Orthopaedic Registries (ICOR), which aims to examine risk factors for orthopedic device failure for registries around the world. Unfortunately, regulatory, privacy, and propriety concerns made sharing of raw data impossible, even if…

One of the main objectives in meta-analysis is to estimate the overall effect size by calculating a confidence interval (CI). The usual procedure consists of assuming a standard normal distribution and a sampling variance defined as the inverse of the sum of the estimated weights of the effect sizes. But this procedure does not take into account…