Lets say you are working on a systematic review concerning diagnostic accurary. You are well on your way, but then it turns out that some essential data that you need for your data extraction, is not reported in the paper.

What to do?

There are ways to get around it, by converting data that is reported, into what you actually need. Yet, this has to be done in a careful and thoughtful way. The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) at the University of Oxford has launched a blog series, that provides you with tips on how to work around missing data. The blog series includes worked examples and eqautions for you to apply directly to your work.

The individual blog posts focuses on different aspect concerning diagnostic accuracy studies:

• The first blog post will help you if the 2×2 classification table is missing
• The second blog post focuses on missing prevalence data
• The third blog post will help you if sensitivity and specificity is missing
• The fourth blog post focuses on what to do, if risk is measured using different scales