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In Reply: We performed an extensive search for reports to include in our meta-analysis. This search initially yielded 6883 reports (5528 journal articles, 1256 meeting presentations, 59 clinicaltrials.gov reports, and 40 US Food and Drug Administration documents) potentially relevant to our study. Of these, we included in our meta-analysis reports of cardiac resynchronization randomized trials that described end points of death, heart failure hospitalization, or ventricular arrhythmia (as recorded by an implantable defibrillator). As noted in our article, we excluded reports of trials with less than 3 months of randomized follow-up (or less than 3 months' follow-up during the first randomized cross-over period) in order to focus our analysis on chronic effects of cardiac resynchronization. We also excluded commentaries, narrative reviews, and reports of research design. Our meta-analysis ultimately included 11 reports describing outcomes from 4 randomized trials with a combined total of 1634 patients.

Drs Cleland and Freemantle provide . . . [Full Text of this Article]