HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Author home page(s): Jan F. Gummert Permission Requests Google Scholar Articles by Kuss, O. Articles by Börgermann, J. PubMed Articles by Kuss, O. Articles by Börgermann, J. Related Collections Extracorporeal circulation Minimally invasive surgery

J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;136:241
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letter to the Editor

Meta-analyses with rare events should use adequate methods

Institute of Medical Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Informatics, Medical Faculty, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany

Jan F. Gummert, Prof Dr med, Jochen Börgermann, Dr med

Department of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery, Medical Faculty, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany, [Response declined]

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

To the Editor:

With great interest we read the meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials of Takagi and associates¹ on postoperative stroke risk in off-pump and on-pump coronary artery bypass grafting. Their work is a welcome update of the most recent meta-analysis on this topic by Sedrakyan and colleagues.²

Contrary to Sedrakyan and associates, however, Tagaki and colleagues do not find a significant difference between off- and on-pump surgery (relative risk [95% confidence interval]: 0.60 [0.34–1.06]; P = .08), whereas Sedrakyan's group found 0.50 [0.27,0.93; . . . [Full Text of this Article]