Research into the methodology and the application of meta-analysis of diagnostic tests in clinical practice

作为给予患者特定诊断的过程的一部分，临床医生通常将对患者应用一个或多个诊断测试。根据检查结果，他或她将判断病人是否患有某种疾病。诊断测试很少是100%准确的。临床医生会参考已经评估了测试准确性的研究，以帮助他们做出判断，并提高为患者做出正确诊断的机会。通常情况下，并不只有一项研究评估测试。已经开发了一种称为荟萃分析的技术，将这些研究的结果联合收割机结合起来，以提供测试性能的总体总结。虽然成功地使用作为一种方法，结合对患者的治疗研究，荟萃分析的诊断测试研究迄今为止只提供了有限的使用，执业临床医生。本研究的目的是探索方法，可能会增加实用的荟萃分析的执业临床医生，并考虑替代方法结合诊断研究。

As part of the process of giving a patient a particular diagnosis, the clinician will often apply one or more diagnostic tests to the patient. On the basis of the test results he or she will judge whether the patient has a particular disease. Unfortunately diagnostic tests are rarely 100% accurate. The clinician will refer to studies which have evaluated the accuracy of the test to aid their judgment and improve the chance of making the correct diagnosis for the patient.Often there is not just one study evaluating a test. A technique called meta-analysis has been developed to combine the results of these studies to provide an overall summary of the test‘s performance. Although used successfully as a method for combining studies on treatments of patients, meta-analysis of studies on diagnostic tests has so far provided only limited use to the practicing clinician. The aim of the research is to explore methods which may increase the utility of meta-analysis to the practicing clinician and consider alternative methods for combining studies in diagnostic research.