With meta-analysis methods playing a crucial role in health research in recent years, this important and clearly-written book provides a much-needed survey of the field. Meta-analysis provides a framework for combining the results of several clinical trials and drawing inferences about the effectiveness of medical treatments. The move towards evidence-based health care and practice is underpinned by the use of meta-analysis. This book: * Provides a thorough criticism and an up-to-date survey of meta-analysis methods * Emphasises the practical approach, and illustrates the methods by numerous examples * Describes the use of Bayesian methods in meta-analysis * Includes discussion of appropriate software for each analysis * Includes numerous references to more advanced treatment of specialist topics * Refers to software code used in the examples available on the authors' Web site Practising statisticians, statistically-minded clinicians and health research professionals will benefit greatly from the clear presentation and numerous examples. Medical researchers will grasp the basic principles of meta-analysis, and learn how to apply the various methods.