ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2013
The effects of excluding treatments from network meta-analyses: survey.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Outcomes of surgical techniques for parastomal hernia repair: a bayesian network meta-analysis.Hernia : the journal of hernias and abdominal wall surgery · 2025Pooled it
- Systemic pharmacological treatments for chronic plaque psoriasis: a network meta-analysis.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Establishing the best step-up treatments for children with uncontrolled asthma despite inhaled corticosteroids: the EINSTEIN systematic review, network meta-analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis using individual participant data.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Comparison of Antifungal Prophylaxis Drugs in Patients With Hematological Disease or Undergoing Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis.JAMA network open · 2020Pooled it
- Hypoglycaemia when adding sulphonylurea to metformin: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2016Pooled it
- Producing treatment hierarchies in network meta-analysis using probabilistic models and treatment-choice criteria.Research synthesis methods · 2026Article
- Methodologies for network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials in pain, anaesthesia, and perioperative medicine: a narrative review.British journal of anaesthesia · 2025Review
- Risk of Bias in Network Meta-Analysis (RoB NMA) tool.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Article
- Vibration of effects resulting from treatment selection in mixed-treatment comparisons: a multiverse analysis on network meta-analyses of antidepressants in major depressive disorder.BMJ evidence-based medicine · 2024Article
- A systematic review and network meta-analysis of antimanic drugs for the treatment of acute mania used in Japan.PCN reports : psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2022Review
- Network Meta-Analysis Techniques for Synthesizing Prevention Science Evidence.Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2022Review
- Introducing the Treatment Hierarchy Question in Network Meta-Analysis.American journal of epidemiology · 2022Article
- Article
- Vibration of effects from diverse inclusion/exclusion criteria and analytical choices: 9216 different ways to perform an indirect comparison meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2019Article
- Empirical evaluation of SUCRA-based treatment ranks in network meta-analysis: quantifying robustness using Cohen's kappa.BMJ open · 2019Article
- Bayesian inference for network meta-regression using multivariate random effects with applications to cholesterol lowering drugs.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Effectiveness of stop smoking interventions among adults: protocol for an overview of systematic reviews and an updated systematic review.Systematic reviews · 2019Article
- Defining the process to literature searching in systematic reviews: a literature review of guidance and supporting studies.BMC medical research methodology · 2018Review
- Bayesian hierarchical models for network meta-analysis incorporating nonignorable missingness.Statistical methods in medical research · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo examine whether the exclusion of individual treatment comparators, including placebo/no treatment, affects the results of network meta-analysis.
designSurvey of networks with individual trial data. DATA SOURCES: PubMed and communication with authors of network meta-analyses. STUDY SELECTION AND
methodsWe included networks that had five or more treatments, contained at least two closed loops, had at least twice as many studies as treatments, and had trial level data available. Investigators abstracted information about study design, participants, outcomes, network geometry, and the exclusion of eligible treatments.
resultsAmong 18 eligible networks involving 757 randomised controlled trials with 750 possible treatment comparisons, 11 had upfront decided not to consider all treatment comparators and only 10 included placebo/no treatment nodes. In 7/18 networks, there was at least one node whose removal caused a more than 1.10-fold average relative change in the estimated treatments effects, and switches in the top three treatments were observed in 9/18 networks. Removal of placebo/no treatment caused large relative changes of the treatment effects (average change 1.16-3.10-fold) for four of the 10 networks that had originally included placebo/no treatment nodes. Exclusion of current uncommonly used drugs resulted in substantial changes of the treatment effects (average 1.21-fold) in one of three networks on systemic treatments for advanced malignancies.
conclusionExcluding treatments in network meta-analyses sometimes can have important effects on their results and can diminish the usefulness of the research to clinicians if important comparisons are missing.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.