Allowing for informative missingness in aggregate data meta-analysis with continuous or binary outcomes: Extensions to metamiss

Missing outcome data can invalidate the results of randomized trials and their meta-analysis. However, addressing missing data is often a challenging issue because it requires untestable assumptions. The impact of missing outcome data on the meta-analysis summary effect can be explored by assuming a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Stata journal Vol. 18; no. 3; p. 716
Main Authors: Chaimani, Anna, Mavridis, Dimitris, Higgins, Julian P T, Salanti, Georgia, White, Ian R
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 01.09.2018
Subjects:
meta-analysis
mixed treatment comparison
st0540
metamiss2
sensitivity analysis
informative missingness
ISSN:1536-867X
Online Access:Get more information
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Missing outcome data can invalidate the results of randomized trials and their meta-analysis. However, addressing missing data is often a challenging issue because it requires untestable assumptions. The impact of missing outcome data on the meta-analysis summary effect can be explored by assuming a relationship between the outcome in the observed and the missing participants via an informative missingness parameter. The informative missingness parameters cannot be estimated from the observed data, but they can be specified, with associated uncertainty, using evidence external to the meta-analysis, such as expert opinion. The use of informative missingness parameters in pairwise meta-analysis of aggregate data with binary outcomes has been previously implemented in Stata by the metamiss command. In this article, we present the new command metamiss2, which is an extension of metamiss for binary or continuous data in pairwise or network meta-analysis. The command can be used to explore the robustness of results to different assumptions about the missing data via sensitivity analysis.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:1536-867X
DOI:10.1177/1536867X1801800310