Methods used in combining medical statistics

The rapidly increasing volume of research, often with discrepant findings, has lead to an increase in the need for meta-analysis today. Meta-analysis refers to the critical review and integration of the findings of seperate studies. Meta-analysis of spesific feature is the use of quantitative methods rather than reliance on judgment alone. This feature distinguishes it from most traditional literature reviews. The main objective of current study was to explain the Meta Analysis which is essentially carried out to re-analyses the reported or unreported data obtained at different time and places by various researchers from widespread of scientific disciplines. Odds ratios were calculated on the generated data sets and the odds ratios in different studies were combined with the two different methods used in the literature by the meta-analysis method. In addition, a new effect size criterion is presented as an alternative to the odds ratio and the data set shows how to combine the values of this criterion in different studies. Key Words: Meta analysis, Mantel-Haenzel, General Variance