Comparison of Estimation Method in Diagnostic Meta-Analysis: An Application in Dentistry

In this study, the objective was to compare different estimation methods in diagnostic meta-analysis. In this scope, DerSimonian and Laird (DL), Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML), Sidik and Jonkman (SJ), Hedges and Olkin (HO), Maximum Likelihood (ML), Paule and Mandel (PM) estimation methods were examined. In the implementation part, effectiveness of Clinical Oral Examination (COE) in predicting the diagnosis of histological dysplasia or Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) was studied. Meta analysis was performed for the data set obtained from 24 studies in accordance with the criteria. Odds Ratio (OR) was used as the effect size. In meta analysis of the random effect model, according to the DerSimonian and Laird (DL) method, the pooled sensitivity value of COE was calculated as 0.953 (95% CI: 0.895-0.979), pooled selectivity was 0.25 (95% CI: 0.124-0.44), and pooled odds ratio was OR = 6.031 (95% CI: 2.208-16.471). According to these results, it can be concluded that COE was not effective in diagnosis. Among the other estimation methods, DerSimonian and Laird (DL) presented the lowest value for I2 and τ2 (I2 = 66.63%, τ2 = 3.489).