Towards evidence-based medicine for paediatricians

Damned if you do and damned if you do not? The field of systematic review, of which Archimedes we believe sneaks in under the 'rapid review' heading, has long since held a solid foundation to what a systematic review needs to do. It needs to have a clear question, with a comprehensive search, and assessment of included studies bias/quality, a synthesis (which may be mathematical; meta-analysis) and a set of conclusions that draw this together.1 What it has been long struggling with is how to 'best do' each of these areas. 'Best' is itself problematic—take 'best' searches, for example. Do they find every single possible scraplette of possible information, taking 3 months of daily specialist work, where the qualitative bulk of the data, leading to the same practical conclusion, was found in the first week2? (And how do you know—prospectively—when the tipple into 'enough' has...

Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - May 23, 2017 Category: Pediatrics Authors: Phillips, B. Tags: Archimedes Source Type: research