Purpose Although acupuncture is widely used for chronic pain, there remains uncertainty about the clinical impact. The aim of this study is to determine the effect size of acupuncture vs. sham acupuncture and the effect size of acupuncture vs. non acupuncture controls for four conditions, back and neck pain, osteoarthritis, and chronic headache. More precision can be obtained in a metaanalysis ...

In a recent meta-analysis reported in BJUI, Zhang et al. [1] looked at the peri-operative outcomes of robot-assisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN) vs those of laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN). Their study represents the third metaanalysis carried out over the last year [1–3], which is testament to the growing interest on this topic that is driven by the rapid spread of robot-assisted kidney ...

Meta-analyses of antidepressant treatment in young people have relied exclusively on clinicianrated measures of depressive symptoms. These symptom-based measures may not capture other important correlates of well-being, such as quality of life, functioning, global mental health or well-being, or self-reported depressive symptoms. Results of the present metaanalysis, based on 8 placebo-controlle...

1. (Taken from [1]) A statistical analysis that combines information from several studies is called a metaanalysis. A meta-analysis compared aspirin with placebo on incidence of heart attack and of stroke, seperately for men and from women (J. Am. Med. Assoc., 295: 306-313, 2006). For the Women’s Health Study, heart attacks were reported for 198 of 19,934 taking aspirin and for 193 of 19,942 ta...

The presented paper describes a methodology, how to perform benchmarking, when classifier performance measurements are sparse. The described methodology is based on missing value imputation and was demonstrated to work, even when 80% of measurements are missing, for example because of unavailable algorithm implementations or unavailable datasets. The methodology was then applied on 29 relationa...

CLINICAL QUESTION Can ultrasonography be used in lieu of chest radiography to diagnose pneumothorax? Articles chosen 1. Ding W, Shen Y, Yang J, et al. Diagnosis of pneumothorax by radiography and ultrasonography: a metaanalysis. Chest 2011;140:859-66. [Epub 2011 May 5] 2. Alrajhi K, Woo MY, Vaillancourt C. Test characteristics of ultrasonography for the detection of pneumothorax: a systematic r...

This paper offers a practical guide to use null hypotheses significance testing and its alternatives. The focus is on improving the quality of statistical inference in quantitative communication research. More consistent reporting of descriptive statistics, estimates of effect size, confidence intervals around effect sizes, and increasing the statistical power of tests would lead to needed impr...