Evidence-Based Practice Module
From:- Wai-Ching Leung and colleagues wp102@yahoo.com
Therapy and Harm (2) - Systematic reviews

1. Read the following article:-

Greenhalgh T. How to read a paper: Papers that summarise other papers (systematic reviews and meta-analyses) BMJ 1997; 315: 672-675

2. Read the rest of the following article here to familiarise yourself with confidence intervals, Forest Plot etc.

3. Read the critical appraisal tool to familarise yourself with the questions you should ask to judge whether a systematic review is valid, and whether and how they should be applied to your patient. Prepare for the case study. You need the following paper given to you in the last session for the case study:-
LacasseY, Wong E, Guyatt GH, King D, Cook DJ, Goldstein RS. Meta-analysis of respiratory rehabilitation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Lancet 1996;348:1115-9.

4. Try MCQ4a - Systematic review (1)

5. In the last session, we talked about adjusting results of treatment studies for baseline risks of our patient. Click here to see one sophisticated way of obtaining baseline risk (though admittedly such data are available only for a few diseases).

6. Click here for the EBP calculators
a) converting CER, EER and PEER to your patient's ARR and NNT
b) convering OR to NNT.
However, they are helpful only if you have understood the basic underlying principles.

7. I gave out the following paper to you last time. If you do not have time, you can leave it until after the next session before reading it.

Oxman AD, Cook DJ, Guyatt GH. Users' Guides to the Medical Literature VI. How to use an overview. JAMA 1994; 272 (17): 1367-1371.

8. For those of you who are coming to the Open Surgery on searching skills next week (from 4:15 pm), remember to bring your Athens password with you.








This page was created and maintained by Wai-Ching Leung
e-mail:- wp102@yahoo.com
last modified October 2001