No abstract

SUMMARYMeta-analysis involves combining summary information from related but independent studies. The objectives of a meta-analysis include increasing power to detect an overall treatment e ect, estimation of the degree of beneÿt associated with a particular study treatment, assessment of the amount of variability between studies, or identiÿcation of study characteristics associated with particularly e ective treatments. This article presents a tutorial on meta-analysis intended for anyone with a mathematical statistics background. Search strategies and review methods of the literature are discussed. Emphasis is focused on analytic methods for estimation of the parameters of interest. Three modes of inference are discussed: maximum likelihood; restricted maximum likelihood, and Bayesian. Finally, software for performing inference using restricted maximum likelihood and fully Bayesian methods are demonstrated. Methods are illustrated using two examples: an evaluation of mortality from prophylactic use of lidocaine after a heart attack, and a comparison of length of hospital stay for stroke patients under two di erent management protocols.

No abstract

No abstract

Among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries hospitalized for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, or pneumonia, reductions in hospital 30-day readmission rates were weakly but significantly correlated with reductions in hospital 30-day mortality rates after discharge. These findings do not support increasing postdischarge mortality related to reducing hospital readmissions.