Table 2. Impact of achieving consistency on expected treatment effects within pairs of treatments in the full network.

Factor considered to assess impact of achieving consistency	Number of notable changes(% of all contrasts)
A. MTC based on study pool 4 (consistent network) vs. MTC based on study pool 3 (homogeneous network including inconsistencies, N = 78)a
Change in direction of effect	7 (9)
Effect size differs by factor 2	3 (4)
Change in statistical significance	7 (9)
B. MTC based on study pool 4 (consistent network) vs. direct effect estimates (all contrasts with direct evidence, N = 31)a
Change in direction of effect	6 (19)
Effect size differs by factor 2	4 (13)
Change in statistical significance	9 (29)

a: The notable changes shown are based on the full MTC network, that is, 89 studies including direct evidence on 31 out of 78 possible pairwise contrasts for 12 drugs plus placebo. For details on the effect and uncertainty estimates, please see S3 Appendix.