Principles of metaanalysis

Metaanalysis is a relatively new tool to help make evidence based decisions. This technique involves the systematic examination of available evidence on a given clinical topic, and the summary of that evidence using statistical techniques that pool data from multiple studies to yield a single result. We briefly discuss the principal steps in a metaanalysis: identifying all the studies; assessing the studies for quality; organizing the studies into subgroups; and summarizing the results.