[R] metafor and meta-analysis at arm-level

[Angelo Franchini]

Hi,

I have been looking for an R package which allowed to do meta-analysis
(both pairwise and network/mixed-treatment) at arm-level rather than at
trial-level, the latter being the common way in which meta-analysis is
done.
By arm-level meta-analysis I mean one that accounts for data provided at
the level of the individual arms of each trial and that does not simply
derive the difference between arms and do the meta-analysis on that.

I am not sure metafor can do that, but hopefully someone more experienced
on it can clarify that to me. I can see that it can take data in both
forms, arm and trial level, but it looks as if the arm-level information
would be converted into trial one through escalc and the latter then used
for the meta-analysis. Is that right?

Many thanks.

Angelo


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