Meta-analysis of 2 × 2 tables is common and useful in research topics including analysis of adverse events and survey research data. Fixed-effects inference typically centers on measures of association such as the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistic or Woolf's estimator, but relies on assuming exact homogeneity across studies, which is often…

Meta-analyses of clinical trials targeting rare events face particular challenges when the data lack adequate numbers of events for all treatment arms. Especially when the number of studies is low, standard random-effects meta-analysis methods can lead to serious distortions because of such data sparsity. To overcome this, we suggest the use of…

Meta-analyses in orphan diseases and small populations generally face particular problems, including small numbers of studies, small study sizes and heterogeneity of results. However, the heterogeneity is difficult to estimate if only very few studies are included. Motivated by a systematic review in immunosuppression following liver…