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Provides a forest plot with the posterior median and 95% credible and prediction intervals for comparisons with the selected intervention (comparator) in the network under the network meta-analysis and network meta-regression for a specified level or value of the investigated covariate, and a forest plot with the corresponding SUCRA values.

Usage

forestplot_metareg(full, reg, compar, cov_name = "covariate value", drug_names)

Arguments

full

An object of S3 class run_model. See 'Value' in run_model.

reg

An object of S3 class run_metareg. See 'Value' in run_metareg.

compar

A character to indicate the comparator intervention. It must be any name found in drug_names.

cov_name

A character or text to indicate the name of the covariate.

drug_names

A vector of labels with the name of the interventions in the order they appear in the argument data of run_model. If drug_names is not defined, the order of the interventions as they appear in data is used, instead.

Value

A panel of two forest plots: (1) a forest plot on the effect estimates and predictions of comparisons with the selected intervention in the network under the network meta-analysis and network meta-regression for a specified level or value of the investigated covariate, and (2) a forest plot on the posterior mean and 95% credible interval of SUCRA values of the interventions (Salanti et al., 2011).

Details

The y-axis of the forest plot on effect sizes displays the labels of the interventions in the network; the selected intervention that comprises the compar argument is annotated in the plot with the label 'Comparator intervention'. For each comparison with the selected intervention, the 95% credible and prediction intervals are displayed as overlapping lines. Black lines refer to estimation under both analyses. Green and red lines refer to prediction under network meta-analysis and network meta-regression, respectively. The corresponding numerical results are displayed above each line: 95% credible intervals are found in parentheses, and 95% predictive intervals are found in brackets. Odds ratios, relative risks, and ratio of means are reported in the original scale after exponentiation of the logarithmic scale.

The y-axis for the forest plot on SUCRA values displays the labels of the interventions in the network. The corresponding numerical results are displayed above each line. Three coloured rectangles appear in the forest plot: a red rectangle for SUCRA values up to 50%, a yellow rectangular for SUCRA values between 50% and 80%, and a green rectangle for SUCRA values over 80%. Interventions falling at the green area are considered as the highest ranked interventions, whilst interventions falling at the red area are considered as the lowest ranked interventions.

In both plots, the interventions are sorted in the descending order of their SUCRA values based on the network meta-analysis.

forestplot_metareg is integrated in metareg_plot.

forestplot_metareg can be used only for a network of interventions. In the case of two interventions, the execution of the function will be stopped and an error message will be printed on the R console.

References

Salanti G, Ades AE, Ioannidis JP. Graphical methods and numerical summaries for presenting results from multiple-treatment meta-analysis: an overview and tutorial. J Clin Epidemiol 2011;64(2):163–71. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2010.03.016

Author

Loukia M. Spineli