
233
9
Mixed Treatment Comparisons,
Evidence Synthesis
9.1 Introduction
This chapter introduces an area of current research which covers two
broad areas: mixed treatment comparisons (MTCs), sometimes called net-
work meta-analysis (NMA) and evidence synthesis, which concern pooling
together data from several randomised trials (or other studies) and estimat-
ing a type of average treatment effect directly or indirectly.
9.2 MTCs
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that have two or more treatments are an
effective yet expensive and lengthy method of comparing treatment effects.
In some cases, there is simply not enough time or resource to perform addi ...