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).