Cauda equina syndrome: The importance of including small studies in meta-analysis.

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Unnecessary Limitation by Excluding Small Studies

However, their study was unnecessarily limited by their exclusion of small CES studies. They stated, “We limited human clinical studies to those involving 20 patients or more.” The 24 CES studies they included all contained at least 20 patients each; however, they made an exception for 2 studies that had 19 patients each.

The authors used this rationale for excluding smaller studies: “It is important to acknowledge that the reliability of meta-analyses to guide clinical decision making is...

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