SAS Software is a powerful and internationally-recognized programming statistical software, which can implement all kinds of meta-analysis, including network meta-analysis. Bayesian statistics is an important statistical method, which uses MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) arithmetic to conduct various statistical inference. With this idea, we implement network meta-analysis thorough PROC MCMC process and introduce this process in this article based on an example.
ObjectiveTo introduce Bayesian meta-analysis of dichotomous data using PROC MCMC in SAS software.MethodsA previous published systematic review was used as an example, Bayesian meta-analysis of dichotomous data was implemented by PROC MCMC in SAS software, and programming code was provided.ResultsThe log-transformed value of odds ratio (OR) was used as the efficacy. The results of the Bayesian meta-analysis were very similar to those obtained by the frequency method.ConclusionsBased on the powerful programming capabilities of SAS, PROC MCMC can easily implement Bayesian meta-analysis of dichotomous data. With the rapid development of Bayesian statistical theory, Bayesian meta-analysis will play an important role in the field of meta-analysis.
