Fadda V, Bartoli L, Ferracane E, Trippoli S, Messori A. Simplified figure to present direct and indirect comparisons: Revisiting the graph 10 years later. World J Methodol 2021; 11(4): 228-230 [PMID: 34322372 DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v11.i4.228]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Andrea Messori, BCPS, PharmD, Academic Fellow, Associate Chief Pharmacist, HTA, ESTAR Toscana, Via San Salvi 12, Firenze 50132, Italy. andrea.messori.it@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Methodol. Jul 20, 2021; 11(4): 228-230 Published online Jul 20, 2021. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v11.i4.228
Simplified figure to present direct and indirect comparisons: Revisiting the graph 10 years later
Valeria Fadda, Laura Bartoli, Elisa Ferracane, Sabrina Trippoli, Andrea Messori
Valeria Fadda, Laura Bartoli, Elisa Ferracane, Sabrina Trippoli, Andrea Messori, HTA, ESTAR Toscana, Firenze 50132, Italy
Author contributions: Fadda V and Messori A were the main contributors of this paper; The other authors were involved in checking the manuscript, identifying inconsistencies, and generating the figure.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Andrea Messori, BCPS, PharmD, Academic Fellow, Associate Chief Pharmacist, HTA, ESTAR Toscana, Via San Salvi 12, Firenze 50132, Italy. andrea.messori.it@gmail.com
Received: March 19, 2021 Peer-review started: March 19, 2021 First decision: May 6, 2021 Revised: May 9, 2021 Accepted: May 27, 2021 Article in press: May 27, 2021 Published online: July 20, 2021
Abstract
A “simplified” figure was proposed in 2011 to summarize the results of controlled trials that evaluate different treatments aimed at the same disease condition. The original criteria for classifying individual binary comparisons included superiority, inferiority and no significance difference; hence, they did not differentiate between no proof of difference vs proof of no difference. We updated the criteria employed in the original “simplified” figure in order to include this differentiation. A revised version of the simplified figure is proposed and described herein. An example of application is also presented. The example is focused on first-line treatments for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Three treatments (medical therapy, cryoballoon ablation, radiofrequency ablation) are compared with one another through direct and indirect comparisons.
Core Tip: A “simplified” figure was proposed in 2011 to summarize the results of controlled trials that evaluate different treatments aimed at the same disease condition. This graphical tool presents the network geometry along with the results of the analysis. The original criteria for classifying individual binary comparisons (direct or indirect comparisons) did not differentiate between no proof of difference vs proof of no difference. We have therefore updated the criteria employed in the original “simplified” figure to include this differentiation.
