Hi,
For example: If I have 20 eligible studies (Both case-control studies and cross-sectional studies without any control group ) coming out of a systematic search.
Can I do meta-analysis with 10 of the studies (as those 10 studies have presented data of interest and case-control) and systematically review the rest of the 10 studies (without control group or not normally distributed data)?
Regards,
Asiful
Hi Asiful,
This all depends on what the aim of your systematic review is;
i.e. what your inclusion and exclusion criteria of studies are.
Please refer to this book for further assistance:
https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/an-introduction-to-systematic-reviews/book245742
This is also an interesting read -
http://www.discoveringstatistics.com/docs/meta.pdf
I hope this helps.
Hi Samantha,
Many thanks for your explanation.
I usually plan to perform meta-analysis of the included studies (if eligible based on the inclusion criteria), however, I was just wondering what if I systematically review some of the included studies (where the data is unusable for meta-analysis) and perform meta-analysis with rest of the studies (where the data is usable for meta-analysis).
Thanks again!
I think the meta-analysis is the statistical part of the systematic review
Regards
I agree with Samantha. I see that you actually can only include 10 of the studies because the rest do not have a control group? Then they would not be meeting the inclusion/exclusion criteria. I would recommend to use PRISMA flow chart to show exactly how the literature search and retrieval of data was done, so that it is transparent. Best of luck in your research.
Hi Angela,
Thanks for your answer.
What If my inclusion criteria includes just observational studies and I do meta-analysis of only the case-control studies and systematically review (without meta-analysis) the rest of the observational studies?
Yes you can and this is methodologically right.
Systematic review usually consists of narrative and statistical presentation of data. According to the available data you can do meta-analysis of even two studies out of twenty included studies due to abscence of data for analysis.
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