We appreciate the interest of the authors of the letter to the editor on our recent
article, “Comparative Effectiveness of Orthoses for Thumb Osteoarthritis: A Systematic
Review and Network Meta-analysis.”
1
Their observations allow us to clarify some specific aspects regarding the need to
use a simplified ranking of the orthosis to conduct the network meta-analysis (NMA),
focused on an important clinical question related to osteoarthritis of the thumb.
NMA within the Bayesian framework involves data, a hierarchical model or likelihood
function with parameters, and prior distributions.
2
Even the NMA is not free from criticism. It allows the synthesis of results of different
studies in the network and obtains relative effect estimates for all possible pairwise
comparisons, but an analysis method needs to be used that minimizes bias owing to
different definitions of the orthosis.
3
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References
- Comparative effectiveness of orthoses for thumb osteoarthritis: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2020 Jul 12; ([Epub ahead of print])
- Thirty years of evidence on the efficacy of drug treatments for chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction: a network meta-analysis.Circ Heart Fail. 2017; 10e003529
Jansen JP, Fleurence R, Devine B, et al. Interpreting indirect treatment comparisons and network meta-analysis for health-care decision making: report of the ISPOR Task Force on Indirect Treatment Comparisons Good Research Practices: part 1. Value Health 201114:417-428.
- Efficacy of non-surgical interventions for trapeziometacarpal (thumb base) osteoarthritis: a systematic review.Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2019 Oct 10; ([Epub ahead of print])
- Effectiveness of splinting for pain and function in people with thumb carpometacarpal osteoarthritis: a systematic review with meta-analysis.Osteoarthr Cartil. 2019; 27: 547-559
- Current practice patterns in conservative thumb CMC joint care: survey results.J Hand Ther. 2014; 27: 14-22
Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 13, 2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
