Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 55, Issue 6 , Pages 570-577 , June 2010

The Conduct and Reporting of Meta-Analyses of Studies of Diagnostic Tests, and a Consideration of ROC Curves: Answers to the January 2010 Journal Club Questions

References 

  1. Whiting P, Rutjes AW, Reitsma JB, et al. The development of QUADAS: a tool for the quality assessment of studies of diagnostic accuracy included in systematic reviews. BMC Med Res Methodol. 2003;3:25
  2. Eddy DM, Hasselblad V, Shachter RD. Meta-analysis by the Confidence Profile Method: The Statistical Synthesis of Evidence. Boston, MA: Academic Press; 1992;
  3. McNeil BJ, Hanley JA. Statistical approaches to the analysis of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Med Decis Making. 1984;4:137–150
  4. Hanley JA, McNeil BJ. The meaning and use of the area under a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Radiology. 1982;143:29–36
  5. Jones CM, Athanasiou T. Summary receiver operating characteristic curve analysis techniques in the evaluation of diagnostic tests. Ann Thorac Surg. 2005;79:16–20
  6. Lang TA, Secic M. How to Report Statistics in Medicine: Annotated Guidelines for Authors, Editors, and Reviewers. 2nd ed.. New York, NY: American College of Physicians; 2006;

 Section editors: Tyler W. Barrett, MD; David L. Schriger, MD, MPH

 Editor's Note: You are reading the 13th installment of Annals of Emergency Medicine Journal Club. The questions and the article they are about (Hlibczuk et al. Ann Emerg Med. 2010;55:51-59) were published in the January 2010 issue.Information about journal club can be found at http://www.annemergmed.com/content/journalclub.Readers should recognize that these are suggested answers. We hope they are accurate; we know that they are not comprehensive. There are many other points that could be made about these questions or about the article in general. Questions are rated “novice” (), “intermediate” (), and “advanced” () so that individuals planning a journal club can assign the right question to the right student. The “novice” rating does not imply that a novice should be able to spontaneously answer the question. “Novice” means we expect that someone with little background should be able to do a bit of reading, formulate an answer, and teach the material to others. Intermediate and advanced questions also will likely require some reading and research, and that reading will be sufficiently difficult that some background in clinical epidemiology will be helpful in understanding the reading and concepts.We are interested in receiving feedback about this feature. Please e-mail journalclub@acep.org with your comments.

PII: S0196-0644(10)00121-6

doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2010.02.008

Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 55, Issue 6 , Pages 570-577 , June 2010

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