However, the abundance of treatment choices do not necessarily facilitate the physician's decision making but rather indicates that no consensus exists regarding which treatment options are suitable. Many RCTs have been conducted to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, supporting certain conclusions. Some systematic reviews have also been published that concentrated only on the pair-wise comparison of different treatments, but no review including all of the available treatments has been conducted. Due to the limitations of the existing reviews and the fact that many relatively new studies have been published, a prominent need exists to conduct an accurate and comprehensive review of this topic.
Network meta-analysis enables comparisons of the effectiveness of all treatments considered. Furthermore, the statistical method based on Bayesian theory enables calculation of the rank probability for each treatment.40 In this type of analysis, investigators may consider all of the possible relevant treatments. Clearly, this approach is in accordance with actual situations in daily clinical practice.41
In this review, we have endeavored to provide useful information regarding comparisons among all treatments for SIS. We hope that the results will aid physician decision making.