In Reply We would like to thank Fingrut and Chen for highlighting the limitations of conventional meta-analysis approaches of retrospective studies. We agree that it would require meta-analyses of patient-level data to provide the most unbiased approach possible for synthesizing retrospective evidence. In the field of allogeneic stem cell transplantation, prospective randomized evidence is unfortunately scarce, and yet consensus mostly relies on evidence from retrospective studies and expert experience. The synthesis of retrospective studies is prone to bias, such as reporting bias and missing data, key dimensions in the assessment of risk of bias, as highlighted in the updated version of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (available at http://www.training.cochrane.org/handbook). Therefore, we had to make some choices and assumptions to conduct our analyses.¹ This was done in accordance with recommended methods and after careful consideration of information available in the studies that we relied on.

在答复中，我们要感谢Fingrut和Chen强调了回顾性研究的传统荟萃分析方法的局限性。我们同意，这需要对患者水平的数据进行荟萃分析，以提供最公正的方法来综合回顾性证据。不幸的是，在同种异体干细胞移植领域中，前瞻性随机证据不足，但共识主要依赖于回顾性研究和专家经验得出的证据。回顾性研究的综合内容容易产生偏见，例如报告偏见和缺失数据，偏见风险评估中的关键维度，如《Cochrane系统干预评论手册》的更新版本所强调的那样（可从http://www.training.cochrane.org/handbook获得）。因此，我们必须做出一些选择和假设来进行分析。¹这是根据推荐的方法并仔细考虑了我们所依赖的研究中提供的信息后完成的。