*! version 1.2.1 22jul2015

Title

network forest -- Forest plot of network meta-analysis data and summaries

Syntax

network forest [if] [in]
[,
options]

Options controlling the summary treatment contrasts
consistency(off)
Omits the "pooled overall" summaries from the forest plot.

inconsistency(off)
Omits the "pooled within design" summaries from the forest plot.

Options controlling output
list Data for the forest plot are listed.

nograph Forest plot is suppressed.

clear Data for the forest plot are loaded into memory.
The forest plot command can then be recalled by pressing F9.

Options controlling graph appearance
colors(string) Three colours for the study-specific results,
"pooled within design" results, and "pooled overall" results.
Default is colors(blue green red).

contrastoptions(string)
Options for the text identifying the contrasts (e.g. "C vs. B").
Any marker label options are possible,
e.g. contrastoptions(mlabsize(large) mlabcolor(red)).

trtcodes makes the display use the treatment codes rather than the full treatment names.

contrastpos(#) Value of the horizontal axis at which
the text identifying the contrasts (e.g. "C vs. B") is centred.

ncolumns(#) Number of columns for display.
Default is determined so that rows per column is approximately 10 times number of columns.

columns(string)
How to assign contrasts to columns.
columns(xtile) assigns contrasts to columns in order using xtile
and can lead to very unbalanced columns (i.e. much more forest in one column than another).
columns(smart) assigns contrasts to columns to optimise balance without
keeping the logical order of the contrasts (so e.g. column 1 may contain "B vs A" and "D vs. A"
while column 2 contains "C vs. A").
The default is columns(smart).

force Confidence intervals are truncated within the range implied by xlabel().
Truncated confidence intervals are indicated by arrows.
force is ignored if xlabel() is not specified.

diamond Summaries ("Pooled by design" and "Pooled overall") are displayed as diamonds.
This is useful for monochrome printing.

group(design|type) Within comparisons, the forest plot may be ordered by design
(showing the summary for each design after the studies for that design)
or by type (showing all the studies then all the summaries).
The default is group(design) if inconsistency results are shown
and group(type) if inconsistency results are not shown.

eform The horizontal axis is labelled using the exponential of the values.
If you don't like the default axis title, you can change it using xtitle().

graph_options Many other standard options for graph twoway:
for example, note(,col(red)) or legend(pos(3) col(1)).
xlabel() is useful to change the axis labelling - see force above.
msize(markersizestyle) is useful to change the marker sizes
- the default is msize(*0.2),
so try e.g. msize(*0.15) or msize(*0.3).

Description

network forest draws a forest plot of network meta-analysis data.
For each contrast for which there is direct evidence
(i.e. which is estimated within one or more trials),
the forest plot displays:

(1) "Studies": each study contributing direct evidence, grouped by design
(i.e. set of treatments in a study);

(2) "Pooled within designs": the pooled treatment effect in each design,
estimated by the inconsistency model previously fitted using network meta inconsistency
(omitted if the inconsistency model has not been fitted);
and

(3) "Pooled overall": the overall treatment effect, estimated by the consistency model
previously fitted using network meta consistency
(omitted if the consistency model has not been fitted).

Each of (1), (2) and (3) is displayed as a point estimate and 95% confidence interval
(or other confidence level determined by set level or the level(#) option).
The marker representing each point estimate has size proportional
to the inverse square of the standard error.
Because pooled estimates (2 and 3) allow for between-studies heterogeneity,
they may have wider confidence intervals and smaller markers than study-specific estimates (1).
(2) and (3) come from matrices of fitted values stored by network meta.

Examples

. network forest, xtitle(Log odds ratio and 95% CI) title(Thrombolytics network) contrastopt(mlabsize(small))

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