Understanding systematic review and meta-analysis: to generate best evidence based practice

The aim of this article is to provide an understanding to systematic review and meta-analysis and to explain its various steps. A systematic review is intended to appraise and synthesize the best available research evidence on a defined research question by using explicit methods to search, critically appraise and synthesise the available literature systematically. After a systematic review, data from individual studies may be pooled quantitatively and can be reanalysed using established statistical method which is called meta-analysis. The purpose of pooling searched literature is to improve the statistical power of the analysis as well as the precision of the estimates of treatment effects.