%0 Journal Article %J Stat Methods Med Res %D 2016 %T ANOVA model for network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy data. %A Victoria N Nyaga %A Aerts, Marc %A M. Arbyn %X

Procedures combining and summarising direct and indirect evidence from independent studies assessing the diagnostic accuracy of different tests for the same disease are referred to network meta-analysis. Network meta-analysis provides a unified inference framework and uses the data more efficiently. Nonetheless, handling the inherent correlation between sensitivity and specificity continues to be a statistical challenge. We developed an arm-based hierarchical model which expresses the logit transformed sensitivity and specificity as the sum of fixed effects for test, correlated study-effects to model the inherent correlation between sensitivity and specificity and a random error associated with various tests evaluated in a given study. We present the accuracy of 11 tests used to triage women with minor cervical lesions to detect cervical precancer. Finally, we compare the results with those from a contrast-based model which expresses the linear predictor as a contrast to a comparator test. The proposed arm-based model is more appealing than the contrast-based model since the former permits more straightforward interpretation of the parameters, makes use of all available data yielding shorter credible intervals, and models more natural variance-covariance matrix structures.

%B Stat Methods Med Res %8 2016 Sep 20 %G eng %1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27655805?dopt=Abstract %R 10.1177/0962280216669182