3.7 Publication Bias:
Visual inspection of the standard funnel plots for all the analyses was
identified as having moderate symmetry. With the aid of Egger’s
regression test and Begg-Mazumdar’s rank correlation test, further
assessment of publication bias was done. For both these tests,
p< 0.05 was considered significant, and the analysis was
considered positive for publication bias. No evident publication bias
was witnessed for most analyses done in this study. However,
Begg-Mazumdar’s rank correlation test for NOAF prevalence outcomes had a
p < 0.05. The corresponding Egger’s regression test showed no
evidence of publication bias for this outcome. Hence, the current
analyses were without any evidence for publication bias (Supplementary
table 2).