Performing arm-based network meta-analysis in R with the pcnetmeta package

Network meta-analysis is a powerful approach for synthesizing direct and indirect evidence about multiple treatment comparisons from a collection of independent studies. at present,the most widely used method in network meta-analysis is contrast-based,in which a baseline treatment needs to be specified in each study,and the analysis focuses on modeling relative treatment effects (typically log odds ratios). however,populationaveraged treatment-specific parameters,such as absolute risks,cannot be estimated by this method without an external data source or a separate model for a reference treatment. recently,an arm-based network meta-analysis method has been proposed,and the r package pcnetmeta provides user-friendly functions for its implementation. this package estimates both absolute and relative effects,and can handle binary,continuous,and count outcomes. © 2017,american statistical association. all rights reserved.