TY - JOUR
T1 - We should not pool diagnostic likelihood ratios in systematic reviews
AU - Zwinderman, Aeilko H.
AU - Bossuyt, Patrick M.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Some authors plead for the explicit use of diagnostic likelihood ratios to describe the accuracy of diagnostic tests. Likelihood ratios are also preferentially used by some journals, and, naturally, are also used in meta-analysis. Although likelihood ratios vary between zero and infinity, meta-analysis is complicated by the fact that not every combination in Re(+) is appropriate. The usual bivariate meta-analysis with a bivariate normal distribution can sometimes lead to positive probability mass at values that are not possible. We considered, therefore, three different statistical models that do not suffer from this drawback. All three approaches are so complicated that we advise to consider meta-analysis of sensitivity and specificity values instead of likelihood ratios
AB - Some authors plead for the explicit use of diagnostic likelihood ratios to describe the accuracy of diagnostic tests. Likelihood ratios are also preferentially used by some journals, and, naturally, are also used in meta-analysis. Although likelihood ratios vary between zero and infinity, meta-analysis is complicated by the fact that not every combination in Re(+) is appropriate. The usual bivariate meta-analysis with a bivariate normal distribution can sometimes lead to positive probability mass at values that are not possible. We considered, therefore, three different statistical models that do not suffer from this drawback. All three approaches are so complicated that we advise to consider meta-analysis of sensitivity and specificity values instead of likelihood ratios
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.2992
DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.2992
M3 - Article
C2 - 17611957
SN - 0277-6715
VL - 27
SP - 687
EP - 697
JO - Statistics in medicine
JF - Statistics in medicine
IS - 5
ER -