The New England journal of medicine
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Comparative Study
Discrepancies between meta-analyses and subsequent large randomized, controlled trials.
Meta-analyses are now widely used to provide evidence to support clinical strategies. However, large randomized, controlled trials are considered the gold standard in evaluating the efficacy of clinical interventions. ⋯ The outcomes of the 12 large randomized, controlled trials that we studied were not predicted accurately 35 percent of the time by the meta-analyses published previously on the same topics.