scholarly journals The Meta-Analysis in Evidence-Based Medicine: High Quality Research When Properly Performed

Author(s):  
Shazil Mahmood ◽  
Paul Nona ◽  
Pedro Villablanca ◽  
Ivan Nunez-Gil ◽  
Harish Ramakrishna
Author(s):  
Abdullah Jibawi ◽  
Mohamed Baguneid ◽  
Arnab Bhowmick

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an effective tool for identifying and critically appraising quality research findings, and allowing the best to be integrated within clinical practice. EBM requires familiarity with evidence grading systems, key statistical methods, and requires a good understanding of how to review and critique scientific papers to guide the clinical practice. This chapter introduces these tools and provide an easy-to-use layout for reading academic papers in hand.


Author(s):  
Paul Harrison ◽  
Philip Cowen ◽  
Tom Burns ◽  
Mina Fazel

‘Evidence-based approaches to psychiatry’ describes the application of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to psychiatric practice. The chapter covers the key processes in EBM, including the formulation of a clinically relevant question, the systematic search for high-quality evidence and the meta-analytic synthesis of data. It demonstrates how evidence-based approaches to psychiatry have led to important developments showing quantitative effects of different treatments through advanced meta-analysis of data from randomized trials. This has underpinned the development of clinical guidelines that have the aim of improving the reliability and quality of treatments that patients receive. The chapter also describes how meta-analyses should be critically reviewed, as well as their problems and limitations. Not all relevant questions in psychiatric research are susceptible to the quantitative approach offered by EBM, and the chapter also outlines how qualitative methodologies can play a key role in answering important questions related, for example, to the patient experience.


Author(s):  
Ann Merete Møller

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is defined as ‘The judicious use of the best current evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients’. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is meant to integrate clinical expertise with the best available research evidence and patient values. The purpose of EBM is to assist clinicians in making the best decisions. Practising EBM includes asking an answerable, well-defined clinical question, searching for information, critically appraising information retrieved, extracting data, synthesizing data, and making conclusions about the overall effect. The clinical question includes information of the following elements: the population, the intervention, and the clinically relevant outcomes in focus. The clinical question is a tool to make the focus of the question clearer, and an aid to build the following search strategy. A comprehensive and reproducible literature search is essential for conducting a high-quality and up-to-date search. The search should include all relevant clinical databases. Papers retrieved after the search must be critically appraised and evaluated for the risk of bias. Evidence-based methods are used in the production of systematic reviews, and the development of clinical guidelines. Whether a meta-analysis should be performed depends on the quality and nature of the extracted data. Practising EBM may be challenged by a lack of well-performed trials, various types of bias (including publication bias), and heterogeneity between existing trials. Several tools have been constructed to help the process; examples are the CONSORT statement, the PRISMA statement, and the AGREE instrument.


2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Cipriani ◽  
C. Barbui ◽  
C. Rizzo ◽  
G. Salanti

Standard meta-analyses are an effective tool in evidence-based medicine, but one of their main drawbacks is that they can compare only two alternative treatments at a time. Moreover, if no trials exist which directly compare two interventions, it is not possible to estimate their relative efficacy. Multiple treatments meta-analyses use a meta-analytical technique that allows the incorporation of evidence from both direct and indirect comparisons from a network of trials of different interventions to estimate summary treatment effects as comprehensively and precisely as possible.


Relevance. In today's world, the first cause of death is pathology of the cardiovascular system. Vascular disease is influenced by many factors: lack of sleep, physical inertia, poorly balanced diet, obesity, heart disease. The fast pace of life forces a person to be in permanent stress, so as not to miss anything and have time for all the goals. This is why there is a demand for excipients and substances that could improve the peak of human cognitive abilities, maintain psychological stability. Today, the pharmaceutical market offers drugs that, according to pharmaceutical marketers, have solutions to the problems outlined above. These substances are classified to group of nootropic drugs (racetams). Objective. Review of high quality research on the effectiveness of nootropic drugs. Materials and methods. The literature review was performed using such scientometric databases as: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, Ingecta, Web of Science, UpToDate. The review included studies of randomized trials, placebo-controlled randomized trials, meta-analyzes, and systematic reviews. Data meet criteria A and B of evidence-based medicine. In the absence of high quality studies, studies with a lower level of evidence were selected. The search was made by topics: improving of cognitive functions, improving ability to work, improving sleep, improving mood, treatment of mental and psychiatric pathologies (Alzheimer's disease, dementia with various etiologies, depression), application in pediatrics. Results. The literature review included more than 40 high quality studies, but no conclusive evidence was found on the effectiveness of any drug. Conclusions. Data on the undeniable efficacy in relation to the cognitive functions of any of these nootropic drugs were not found in any study. In the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, some (Cerebrolysin, Nicergoline) drugs show controversial results of efficacy and safety. They require continued clinical research and they need to be approved by the FDA.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Bulmash Ben

<p><em>Many modern organizations invest substantially in employee well-being, especially knowledge-intensive companies. However, decision makers fail to make informed choices based on theoretical advancements and empirical evidence provided by years of high-quality research on individual well-being. This study reviews five fundamental scientific principles regarding people’s experiences of well-being and discusses the possible implications of the findings on organizational well-being initiatives. My purpose is to encourage organizations and decision makers to make more effective evidence-based investments in employee well-being.</em><em></em></p>


2008 ◽  
Vol 5;12 (5;9) ◽  
pp. 819-850
Author(s):  
Laxmaiah Manchikanti

Observational studies provide an important source of information when randomized controlled trials (RCTs) cannot or should not be undertaken, provided that the data are analyzed and interpreted with special attention to bias. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) stresses the examination of evidence from clinical research and describes it as a shift in medical paradigm, in contrast to intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale. While the importance of randomized trials has been created by the concept of the hierarchy of evidence in guiding therapy, much of the medical research is observational. The reporting of observational research is often not detailed and clear enough with insufficient quality and poor reporting, which hampers the assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the study and the generalizability of the mixed results. Thus, in recent years, progress and innovations in health care are measured by systematic reviews and meta-analyses. A systematic review is defined as, “the application of scientific strategies that limit bias by the systematic assembly, clinical appraisal, and synthesis of all relevant studies on a specific topic.” Meta-analysis usually is the final step in a systematic review. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are labor intensive, requiring expertise in both the subject matter and review methodology, and also must follow the rules of EBM which suggests that a formal set of rules must complement medical training and common sense for clinicians to integrate the results of clinical research effectively. While expertise in the review methods is important, the expertise in the subject matter and technical components is also crucial. Even though, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, specifically of RCTs, have exploded, the quality of the systematic reviews is highly variable and consequently, the opinions reached of the same studies are quite divergent. Numerous deficiencies have been described in methodologic assessment of the quality of the individual articles. Consequently, observational studies can provide an important complementary source of information, provided that the data are analyzed and interpreted in the context of confounding bias to which they are prone. Appropriate systematic reviews of observational studies, in conjunction with RCTs, may provide the basis for elimination of a dangerous discrepancy between the experts and the evidence. Steps in conducting systematic reviews of observational studies include planning, conducting, reporting, and disseminating the results. MOOSE, or Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology, a proposal for reporting contains specifications including background, search strategy, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Use of the MOOSE checklist should improve the usefulness of meta-analysis for authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and decision-makers. This manuscript describes systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational studies. Authors frequently utilize RCTs and observational studies in one systematic review; thus, they should also follow the reporting standards of the Quality of Reporting of Meta-analysis (QUOROM) statement, which also provides a checklist. A combined approach of QUOROM and MOOSE will improve reporting of systematic reviews and lead to progress and innovations in health care. Key words: Observational studies, evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews, metaanalysis, randomized trials, case-control studies, cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, confounding bias, QUOROM, MOOSE


Author(s):  
Philip Wiffen ◽  
Marc Mitchell ◽  
Melanie Snelling ◽  
Nicola Stoner

This chapter provides a brief overview to the concept of evidence-based medicine (EBM) starting with a well-accepted definition. The importance of clinical significance over statistical significance is discussed. A number of useful tools are presented and described to enable the practitioner to become competent in recognizing high-quality evidence and to have the skills to critically appraise evidence that is potentially important to their practice. There is a brief description of some of the statistical tools commonly used in EBM including binary data tools such as odds ratios, number needed to treat, and relative risks.


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