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The revised edition of the Handbook offers the only guide on how to conduct, report and maintain a Cochrane Review The second edition of The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions contains essential guidance for preparing and maintaining Cochrane Reviews of the effects of health interventions. Designed to be an accessible resource, the Handbook will also be of interest to anyone undertaking systematic reviews of interventions outside Cochrane, and many of the principles and methods presented are appropriate for systematic reviews addressing research questions other than effects of interventions. This fully updated edition contains extensive new material on systematic review methods addressing a wide-range of topics including network meta-analysis, equity, complex interventions, narrative synthesis, and automation. Also new to this edition, integrated throughout the Handbook, is the set of standards Cochrane expects its reviews to meet. Written for review authors, editors, trainers and others with an interest in Cochrane Reviews, the second edition of The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions continues to offer an invaluable resource for understanding the role of systematic reviews, critically appraising health research studies and conducting reviews.

Modern meta-analyses do more than combine the effect sizes of a series of similar studies. Meta-analyses are currently increasingly applied for any analysis beyond the primary analysis of studies, and for the analysis of big data. This 26-chapter book was written for nonmathematical professionals of medical and health care, in the first place, but, in addition, for anyone involved in any field involving scientific research. The authors have published over twenty innovative meta-analyses from the turn of the century till now. This edition will review the current state of the art, and will use for that purpose the methodological aspects of the authors'own publications, in addition to other relevant methodological issues from the literature.Are there alternative works in the field? Yes, there are, particularly in the field of psychology. Psychologists have invented meta-analyses in 1970, and have continuously updated methodologies. Although very interesting, their work, just like the whole discipline of psychology, is rather explorative in nature, and so is their focus to meta-analysis. Then, there is the field of epidemiologists. Many of them are from the school of angry young men, who publish shocking news all the time, and JAMA and other publishers are happy to publish it. The reality is, of course, that things are usually not as bad as they seem. Finally, some textbooks, written by professional statisticians, tend to use software programs with miserable menu programs and requiring lots of syntax to be learnt. This is prohibitive to clinical and other health professionals. The current edition is the first textbook in the field of meta-analysis entirely written by two clinical scientists, and it consists of many data examples and step by step analyses, mostly from the authors'own clinical research.

Healthcare providers, consumers, researchers and policy makers are inundated with unmanageable amounts of information, including evidence from healthcare research. It has become impossible for all to have the time and resources to find, appraise and interpret this evidence and incorporate it into healthcare decisions. Cochrane Reviews respond to this challenge by identifying, appraising and synthesizing research-based evidence and presenting it in a standardized format, published in The Cochrane Library (www.thecochranelibrary.com). The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions contains methodological guidance for the preparation and maintenance of Cochrane intervention reviews. Written in a clear and accessible format, it is the essential manual for all those preparing, maintaining and reading Cochrane reviews. Many of the principles and methods described here are appropriate for systematic reviews applied to other types of research and to systematic reviews of interventions undertaken by others. It is hoped therefore that this book will be invaluable to all those who want to understand the role of systematic reviews, critically appraise published reviews or perform reviews themselves. This title is also available as a mobile App from MedHand Mobile Libraries. Buy it now from Google Play or the MedHand Store.