Forest plots

摘要

A systematic literature review can provide a robust answer to aclinical question by identifying individual studies that provideevidence relevant to the question and summarising their results. Inthe field of physiotherapy, systematic reviews commonly summarise the results of randomised trials that test the effect of anintervention.1 However, systematic reviews can also summarisestudies of the accuracy of diagnostic tests,2 studies of theprevalence of a clinical condition,3 studies of prognostic factors,4or other study types. If the included studies are sufficiently similarand the results can be obtained in the same format, a meta-analysismay be performed.5,6 Meta-analysis is a statistical method used tosummarise numerical data from the individual studies into oneoverall estimate. The results of the individual studies and theoverall estimate from the meta-analysis are usually presented in agraph called a forest plot.