Confronta i metodi

	Meta-analisi basata su protocollo	Meta-analisi di rete
Campo	Scientometria	Sintesi delle evidenze
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	1990s–2015 (Cochrane established 1993; PROSPERO launched 2011; PRISMA-P 2015)	2002
Ideatore	Cochrane Collaboration; formalized through PROSPERO and PRISMA-P initiatives	Lumley (2002)
Tipo	Evidence synthesis with pre-registered protocol	Method
Fonte seminale	Higgins, J. P. T., Thomas, J., Chandler, J., Cumpston, M., Li, T., Page, M. J., & Welch, V. A. (Eds.). (2023). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Version 6.4). Cochrane.	Lumley, T. (2002). Network meta-analysis for indirect treatment comparisons. Statistics in Medicine, 21(16), 2313–2324.
Alias	pre-registered meta-analysis, prospective meta-analysis, registered meta-analysis, protocol-driven meta-analysis	Mixed Treatment Comparison, MTC, Indirect Comparison Meta-Analysis
Correlati	4	1
Sintesi	A protocol-based meta-analysis is a meta-analysis conducted according to a detailed, pre-registered protocol that specifies all key methodological decisions — research questions, eligibility criteria, search strategy, outcome measures, and statistical methods — before data collection begins. Pre-registration, typically through PROSPERO or a comparable registry, distinguishes this approach from post-hoc or exploratory meta-analyses and substantially reduces the risk of selective reporting and outcome switching.	Network meta-analysis (NMA) is a systematic method for comparing multiple interventions simultaneously within a single analytical framework, incorporating both direct evidence (head-to-head trials) and indirect evidence (comparisons via common comparators). First formalized by Lumley in 2002, NMA allows researchers to rank treatments and quantify comparative effectiveness even when some treatment pairs have never been directly studied.