Symptom scores and clinical measures in benign prostatic hyperplasia

Table 4 Publication bias assessment: Egger’s regression test, Kendall’s Tau (Begg’s Test), and Rosenthal’s Fail-Safe N for all three meta-analyses¹

Outcome pair	Egger’s intercept	Egger’s P value	Kendall’s τ	Kendall’s P value	Fail-Safe n	Overall bias assessment
IPSS-quality of life	1.774	0.076	0.600	0.233	83	No compelling evidence of bias
Prostate volume-IPSS	0.659	0.510	0.107	0.630	118	No evidence of publication bias
IPSS-post-void residual	1.710	0.0872	0.309	0.218	78	No significant bias; borderline Egger’s2

¹Fail-Safe N threshold = 5k + 10; International Prostate Symptom Score-quality of life = 35; Prostate volume-International Prostate Symptom Score = 70; International Prostate Symptom Score-post-void residual = 65. Values exceeding the threshold indicate robustness against publication bias.

²Borderline Egger’s result (P = 0.087) for International Prostate Symptom Score-post-void residual, with k = 11. Kendall’s Tau (Begg’s test): P < 0.05 indicates significant rank correlation between effect size and standard error. Egger’s test: P < 0.05 indicates statistically significant funnel plot asymmetry.

IPSS: International Prostate Symptom Score.