Fig. 3.

Forest plots presenting estimated relative risks (RRs) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results are presented for different antithrombotic strategies compared to low-dose acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). Direct comparisons are the number of studies that directly compared the treatment option to the universal comparator. Hereafter, the proportion of direct evidence is shown. The mean pathlength characterizes the degree of indirectness of an estimate. Minimal parallelism presents the minimum number of independent paths contributing to the effect estimate [22]. A All patients. B Patients who underwent a peripheral vascular intervention for peripheral arterial disease. For the patients who underwent a peripheral vascular intervention, no network meta-analysis could be performed for acute limb events, since studies had no overlapping antithrombotic regimens. ALI acute limb event, bid bi-daily, INR international normalized ratio, MACE major adverse cardiovascular events, MALE major adverse limb events, NNT number needed to treat, NNTB number needed to treat for an additional beneficial outcome, NNTH number needed to treat for an additional harmful outcome, VKA vitamin K antagonist, ∞ need to treat an infinite number of people to cause or avoid an event (i.e. no effect)