I am working on a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the global prevalence and incidence of a disease. In the beginning of the study, in order to ge the incidence, I put no restriction on the study design but I got more than 800 studies that match my criteria till now! Very huge number to deal with!
I need to refine my inclusion and exclusion criteria again for the incidence outcome by including only cross sectional, cohort and case series studies.I will include only cross sectional studies for pooling the prevalence but I need to refine the criteria again just for investigating the incidence as well.
Please give me your opinion on this situation and kindly provide me the references for that.
Thank you,
Khaled
For meta-analysis of incidence rate I think it is appropriate just to include cohort studies. I suggest you to read link as follow, hope it may help you.
https://www.statsdirect.com/help/meta_analysis/incidence_rate.htm
In order to obtain pooled global incidence of the disease, it is suggested to include "retrospective and prospective cohort studies (including post hoc analyses derived from clinical trials)" in the systematic reviews.
Thank you all for you reply. Please let me ask my question in another words! Which study designs can I exclude to refine my criteria again?
Incidence is the number of diagnosed case (whatever disease you are interested in) over a time period. So first, I suggest that you refine which time period you are exploring, this will make the search result more manageable. Second, the study design corresponds to the record keeping/data quality of disease register of a particular nation/area: Usually there are cancer and stroke collected prospectively at national-level. This data tend to be reported annually. In case your disease of interest is rare, approximation of incidence from cross sectional study might also be appropriate.
Regards,
Ray Sugianto
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