ESMARConf2021 Session 4B (Data Viz): Aaron Conway
Channel: ESMARConf2021
Date: 22/01/2021

Presenter: Aaron Conway
Session: Data Viz (https://youtu.be/dxxUcYEv4D8)
Title: Using the flextable package to create graphical summaries of study characteristics in systematic reviews
Abstract: It is very common in systematic reviews for a summary of the characteristics of each study included in the systematic review to be presented in the form of a table consisting entirely of text. This presentation demonstrates how the flextable package can be used to replace some of the text with graphical features for a study characteristics table. The printing of the table in landscape format in a knitted word document along with the remainder of the report can be achieved using the officedown package. Some features from the flextable package used in the table include: - Use of coloured inline ‘minibar’ images to show the male:female ratio in included studies using flextable::minibar; - Images of flags to indicate the country using flextable::asimage (in addition to being aesthetically more pleasing than presenting this information in text, this feature also reduced the amount of horizontal space required for this column, which is useful for static-print tables that need to be incorporated into Word documents); - Use of inline images so the reader can more quickly and clearly distinguish between studies that included higher numbers of participants (flextable::minibar) and measurements (flextable::lollipop) than if the information was presented in text format. Importantly, using the flextable package to create this table meets the requirements for most journals, which stipulate that tables must be submitted in a word document form.

Please cite as: Conway, Aaron (2021): Using the flextable package to create graphical summaries of study characteristics in systematic reviews. Presented at ESAMRConf2021. figshare. Conference contribution. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13642679.v1