Response to letter to the editor regarding analysis of heterogeneity and publication bias

Published in: J Thorac Oncol, Vol. 17, No. 3 (March 2022)

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By Yannan Lin, Mingzhou Fu, Kosuke Inoue, Christie Y Jeon, William Hsu
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Excerpt:

"To the Editor:

We appreciate the insightful suggestions and comments of Dr. Rajagopal et al. regarding our article. We agree that a thorough analysis of heterogeneity and publication bias is crucial in meta-analysis.

1. Heterogeneity: Considerable heterogeneity in adherence rates was detected and measured using the Cochran’s Q test and I2 statistic. We can further quantify the magnitude of heterogeneity using tau-squared (τ2), which is the between-study variance. As stated in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 Expanded Checklist, it is helpful to report τ2. We note that reporting τ2 changes neither our original finding of considerable heterogeneity in adherence rates nor results of the downstream analysis to identify the sources of heterogeneity..."

doi: doi.org/10.1016/j.jtho.2021.12.013 PMID: 35216733