Pharmacoeconomic applications of meta-analysis for single groups using antifungal onychomycosis lacquers as an example.

This paper presents a method for summarizing clinical success rates across studies or arms of studies. Topical lacquers for the treatment of onychomycosis are used to illustrate the approach. A modification of Cochran's method, later modified by Der-Simonian and Laird, is presented in a stepwise fashion. A summary point estimate weighted by both within- and between-study variance is produced, along with a 95% confidence interval. This method can be applied to any set of proportions. In the example, the success rate of ciclopirox lacquer was 81.6% (standard error, 3.5%) and of amorolfine lacquer was 71.4% (standard error, 2.3%). A stricter definition of success (ie, cure only) produced success rates of 31.3% (standard error, 2.4%) and 35.8% (standard error, 1.9%), respectively. This stepwise approach for combining single proportions is suggested as a useful method for summarizing success rates across different trials.