The influence of methodologic quality on the conclusion of a landmark meta-analysis on thrombolytic therapy

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Abstract
Verhagen et al. (5) suggest, in a study done in 2002, that methodologic quality of individual trials do not influence the conclusions of a landmark meta-analysis on thrombolytic therapy. This meta-analysis was studied because it was believed that it represents the true effect because its conclusions remain valid 15 years after publication. They incorporated the results of quality assessment in five different ways in the calculation of the pooled odd ratios (ORs): (i) component analysis, (ii) visual plot, (iii) quality score as a threshold score, (iv) quality score as a weighting factor, and (v) cumulative pooling. They did not find much discrepancy using either of these methods of quality assessment.