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ERIC Number: EJ1279820
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Jan
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1759-2879
EISSN: N/A
Graphical Enhancements to Summary Receiver Operating Characteristic Plots to Facilitate the Analysis and Reporting of Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy Data
Patel, Amit; Cooper, Nicola; Freeman, Suzanne; Sutton, Alex
Research Synthesis Methods, v12 n1 p34-44 Jan 2021
Diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) systematic reviews are conducted to summarize evidence on the accuracy of a diagnostic test including a critical evaluation of the primary studies. Where appropriate, the evidence is meta-analyzed to obtain pooled estimates of effectiveness. In this study, we reviewed and critiqued three DTA guidance documents with respect to the graphical presentation of DTA meta-analysis results. All three documents recommended the use of two forms of graphical presentation: (a) forest plots displaying meta-analysis results for sensitivity (ie, the true positive rate) and specificity (ie, true negative rate) separately, and (b) Summary Receiver Operating Characteristic (SROC) curve to provide a global summary of test performance. Two primary shortcomings were identified: (a) lack of incorporation of quality assessment results into the main analysis and; (b) ambiguity with which the contribution of individual studies is represented on SROC curves. In response, two alternative graphical approaches were developed: (1) A quality assessment enhanced SROC plot which displays the results from individual studies in the meta-analysis with multiple indicators of quality assessed using QUADAS-2; and (2) A percentage study weights enhanced SROC plot which accurately portrays the percentage contribution each study makes to the meta-analysis. The proposed enhanced SROC curves facilitate the exploration of DTA data, leading to a deeper understanding of the primary studies included in a DTA meta-analysis including identifying reasons for between study heterogeneity and why specific study results may be divergent. Both plots can easily be produced in the free online interactive application, MetaDTA (https://crsu.shinyapps.io/dta_ma/).
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A