Page 29 - Journal of Structural Heart Disease Volume 4, Issue 5
P. 29
Original Scientific Article 224
Figure 1. Flow diagram of study selection process according to PRISMA.
mean deviance contribution close to one. [12, 14] All statistical analyses were performed using WinBUGS 1.4 (MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK) [15] and the Microsoft Excel-based tool (NetMetaXL). [12]
Results
The process of citation screening and publication selection according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)
flow chart is demonstrated in Figure 1. Initial screen- ing was performed on 148 articles. Five trials were then fully retrieved for review and four trials were included in the final analyses. Two trials compared PFO closure to antiplatelet therapy and/or oral anti- coagulation [6, 8], One trial compared PFO closure to antiplatelet therapy alone, [7] and one trial compared antiplatelet therapy one time to PFO closure and a second time to oral anticoagulation. [5] Characteris- tics of trials included in our study are shown in Table 1.
Journal of Structural Heart Disease, October 2018
Volume 4, Issue 5:222-227
