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The volume of scientific and research studies being published is overwhelming even for the most experienced researchers. The most important medical questions and hypotheses are studied by scientists and teams scattered around the world, sometimes with diverse and seemingly contradictory results, making decision-making difficult.
The meta-analysis presents a global perspective, I like to say «they look at everything from above,» and it is a statistical procedure capable of integrating the findings of many independent studies, finding results and general trends that individual studies cannot on their own.
A refined methodology is needed to search, select, and review multiple published studies on a specific topic in order to then combine and analyze the results. Meta-analysis generates research by designing new studies with a lower risk of bias, adding new variables, and generating new hypotheses. This research makes it possible to create new clinical guidelines that help healthcare professionals make decisions.
All studies have biases, and it is common to find published systematic reviews and meta-analyses that contain significant flaws and deficient methodology which can limit the validity of the results. To avoid this, there are sufficient statistical tests to account for biases and control them.
At OMEDICS, we have set out to generate rigorous meta-analyses, improving the design, analysis, graphics, presentation, interpretation, and publication of systematic reviews so that they continue to play a central role in evidence-based medicine.
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