Burden of Culture-Confirmed Pediatric Pneumococcal Pneumonia in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Pneumococcal pneumonia (PP) causes almost one in five deaths in children younger than 5 years worldwide. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), pneumonia causes 14% of all deaths. Although pneumococcal disease is a vaccine-preventable disease that accounts for a significant proportion of this burden, the decision-making process to introduce pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in official schedules is still complex in LAC.

[Introduction to the indirect meta-analyses].

Meta-analyses are studies that aim to compile all available information, grouping them according to an specific theme and evaluating it through methodological quality tools. When there are two specific comparisons of treatments based on randomized clinical trials, standard meta-analyses are the best option, but there are scenarios in which there is no available literature for those direct comparisons. In these cases, an alternative method to consider is indirect comparison or indirect meta-analyses.

[Introduction to traditional meta-analysis].

Currently there is a steady growth of scientific information in medicine which unable complete knowledge of all the articles published. Meta-analysis are studies that aim to compile all available information, grouping them according to a specific outcome, and evaluating it through methodological quality tools. Its main objective is to estimate a summary effect size after combining the individual results of each study selected under a sufficiently valid statistical analysis.