Good Statistical Practices for Contemporary Meta-Analysis: Examples Based on a Systematic Review on COVID-19 in Pregnancy

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been increasingly used to pool research findings from multiple studies in medical sciences. The reliability of the synthesized evidence depends highly on methodological quality a systematic review meta-analysis. In recent years, several tools developed guide reporting appraisal meta-analyses, much statistical effort has paid improve their quality. Nevertheless, many contemporary continue employ conventional methods, which may be suboptimal compared with alternative methods available synthesis literature. Based COVID-19 pregnancy, this article provides an overview select good practices for performing perspectives. Specifically, we suggest meta-analysts (1) providing sufficient information included studies, (2) reproducibility (3) using appropriate terminologies, (4) double-checking presented results, (5) considering estimators between-study variance, (6) confidence intervals, (7) prediction (8) assessing small-study effects whenever possible, (9) one-stage methods. We use worked examples illustrate these practices. Relevant code is also provided. could produce noticeably different point interval estimates some thus affect conclusions. such cases, researchers should interpret results great caution consider