R help - Aug 2011 - Multiple forest plots with the same x-axis and colour coded estimates and lines

Dear all,

I would like to draw three forest plots to represent results at years 1, 2
and 3.  I have the data as point estimates and 95% confidence intervals.
Using the following code I can get three basic forest plots - the first
which has the table of results.  I have to plot each separately as the usual
par(mfrow=c(3,1)) does not work with the function forestplot within rmeta.
I can easily put them next to one another within powerpoint or similar
though so that's not a problem.

#Read data in
dattabrem1 <- read.table("risk factors rem1.txt",header=TRUE) #
year 1
results
dattabrem2 <- read.table("risk factors rem2.txt",header=TRUE) #
year 2
results
dattabrem3 <- read.table("risk factors rem3.txt",header=TRUE) #
year 3
results

# Set up table of results for the three plots
plotextr <-
rbind(c("Age","Gender","Seizures","Treatment"),c("10","M","2","CBZ"),c("10","F","2","CBZ"),
c("10","M","2","LTG"),c("10","F","2","LTG"),c("10","M","10","CBZ"),c("10","F","10","CBZ"),
c("10","M","10","LTG"),c("10","F","10","LTG"),c("40","M","2","CBZ"),c("40","F","2","CBZ"),
c("40","M","2","LTG"),c("40","F","2","LTG"),c("40","M","10","CBZ"),c("40","F","10","CBZ"),
c("40","M","10","LTG"),c("40","F","10","LTG"),c("75","M","2","CBZ"),c("75","F","2","CBZ"),
c("75","M","2","LTG"),c("75","F","2","LTG"),c("75","M","10","CBZ"),c("75","F","10","CBZ"),
c("75","M","10","LTG"),c("75","F","10","LTG"))

# 1 year results
estimate1y <- c(NA,dattabrem1$HR)
lowerd1y <- c(NA,dattabrem1$CIlower)
upperd1y <- c(NA,dattabrem1$CIupper)
# 2 year results
estimate2y <- c(NA,dattabrem2$HR)
lowerd2y <- c(NA,dattabrem2$CIlower)
upperd2y <- c(NA,dattabrem2$CIupper)
# 3 year results
estimate3y <- c(NA,dattabrem3$HR)
lowerd3y <- c(NA,dattabrem3$CIlower)
upperd3y <- c(NA,dattabrem3$CIupper)

# Draw forest plots
forestplot(plotextr,estimate1y,lowerd1y,upperd1y,is.summary=c(TRUE,rep(FALSE,24)),zero="",align="c",xlab="Remission
@ 1 year")
forestplot(plotext2r,estimate2y,lowerd2y,upperd2y,zero="",xlab="Remission
@
2 years")
forestplot(plotext2r,estimate3y,lowerd3y,upperd3y,zero="",xlab="Remission
@
3 years")

Having managed to obtain these basic plots I need the x-axes to be the
same.  Usually xlim would be sufficient to do this but this function is not
avaialble within forestplot so does anyone know how I can make the x-axes
the same over all the plots?

Additionally, within each plot, two treatments are compared (top two blocks
are treatment 1, 2nd 2 blocks are treatment 2, next 2 are treatment 1 etc.)
Is there any way I can colour code the boxes to show this?

Many thanks,
Laura
P.S. I'm using Windows, R 2.9.2

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