Introduction:

Frequently the medical information on a certain clinical aspect is so unclear and contradictory, that health professional does not have the time or guidance to be able to analyze it in its entirety, and thus be able to take advantage of it in its real magnitude.

Objective:

To review the existing methodology and systems to perform meta-analysis of clinical trials.

Methods:

The process of analyzing this knowledge, called meta-analysis, has been reviewed; this is a systematic, qualitative and quantitative study of a group of reports or research articles, generally focused on the analysis of a clinical aspect.

Results:

In this review article, we show how the meta-analysis is designed, executed and reported, as well as the steps to carry out the meta-analysis.

Discussion:

The systems most used to perform meta-analysis are summarized and compared.

Conclusions:

With this work we know that the analysis of sensitivity, accumulated and publication bias cannot be missing for a meta-analysis, as well as the systems where each of these analyzes can be performed.

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