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Foreword. <p>Introduction:.</p> <p>Rationale, potentials and promise of systematic review.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part I: Systematic reviews of controlled trials.</p> <p>Principles and procedures.</p> <p>Problems and limitations.</p> <p>Identifying randomised trials.</p> <p>Assessing the quality of controlled clinical trials.</p> <p>Obtaining individual patient data from randomised controlled trials.</p> <p>Assessing the quality of reports of systematic reviews.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part II: Investigating variability within and between studies.</p> <p>Going beyond the grand mean.</p> <p>Why and how sources of heterogeneity should be investigated.</p> <p>Analysing the relationship between treatment benefit and underlying risk.</p> <p>Investigating and dealing with publication and other biases.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part III: Systematic review of observational studies.</p> <p>Systematic reviews of observational studies.</p> <p>Systematic reviews of prognostic studies.</p> <p>Systematic reviews of evaluations of diagnostic studies.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part IV: Statistical method and computer software.</p> <p>Statistical methods of examining heterogeneity and combining results from several studies.</p> <p>Choice of effect measure for binary outcomes.</p> <p>Meta-analysis software.</p> <p>Meta-analysis in STATA.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part V: Using systematic reviews in practice.</p> <p>Applying the results of systematic reviews at the bedside.</p> <p>Numbers needed to treat derived from meta-analysis: pitfalls and cautions.</p> <p>Using systematic reviews in clinical guidelines development.</p> <p>Using systematic reviews for evidence based policy making.</p> <p>Using systematic reviews for economic evaluation.</p> <p>Using systematic reviews and registers of ongoing trials for scientific and ethical trial design.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part VI: The Cochrane Collaboration.</p> <p>The Cochrane Collaboration in the 20th Century.</p> <p>The Cochrane Collaboration in the 21st Century: ten challenges and one reason whey they must be met.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Part VII: Future challenges.</p> <p>Unresolved issues and future developments</p>

<p><b>Matthias Egger</b> is professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, as well as professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.</p> <p><b>George Davey-Smith</b> is the editor of <i>Systematic Reviews in Health Care: Meta-Analysis in Context</i>, 2nd Edition, published by Wiley.</p> <p><b>Douglas G. Altman</b>, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford and EQUATOR Network, Oxford, UK.</p>

The second edition of this best-selling book has been thoroughly revised and expanded to reflect the significant changes and advances made in systematic reviewing. New features include discussion on the rationale, meta-analyses of prognostic and diagnostic studies and software, and the use of systematic reviews in practice.

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