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NDT Advance Access originally published online on April 24, 2008
Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation 2008 23(9):2729-2732; doi:10.1093/ndt/gfn196
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of ERA-EDTA. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org


An infallible recipe? A story of cinnamon, soufflé and meta-analysis

Wim Van Biesen, Francis Verbeke and Raymond Vanholder

Renal Division, Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Ghent, Belgium

Correspondence and offprint requests to: Wim Van Biesen, Renal division, Department of internal Medicine, University Hospital Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: wim.vanbiesen@ugent.be

Keywords: guidelines; meta-analysis; methodology

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.



   A recipe by Escoffier...
 
In the slipstream of evidence-based medicine, the technique of meta-analysis risks to become ‘the philosophers stone’ to turn dodgy facts into sound and trustworthy evidence. The ritual of painstakingly performing some methodological and mathematical acts renders the results to indubitable truth in most readers eyes. This magic has resulted in an explosion of meta-analyses on all imaginable topics in medicine. A Pubmed search demonstrates an exponential increase of papers reporting or discussing results of meta-analyses (Figure 1).


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  		Fig. 1 Number of articles discussing or reporting results of meta-analyses, as quoted in Pubmed, in different years.

 
Meta-analyses certainly do have their place in scientific research. Like herbs, if used in the correct dish, and not too much or too often, they can give that extra bit of flavour that turns ‘food’ into a ‘delicious dish’. Well-performed meta-analyses can be of great value to guide general recommendations (e.g. aspirin reduces mortality in the . . . [Full Text of this Article]



   Selection of the ingredients...
 


   Finding the right ingredients...
 


   Spicing up ingredients...
 


   Blue cheese and cheddar are both cheeses but...
 


   A dot of harisha...
 

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