Absence of small study effects in neurosurgical meta-analyses: A meta-epidemiological study

Background Small studies are prone to lower methodological quality and publication bias, and are more likely to report greater beneficial effects. A meta-epidemiological study was undertaken to investigate and quantify the impact of small study effects on meta-analyses in the neurosurgical literature. Methods A PubMed search was used to procure meta-analyses from Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Spine, Acta Neurochirurgica and Journal of...