392,269 papers found

Systematic reviews of diagnostic validity have been proposed as the best methodological tool to integrate all the available evidence and to help physicians decide whether to use a given diagnostic test. These studies aim to synthesize the results obtained in different primary studies into a couple of indices, generally…

The increase in scientific literature has led reviewers to conduct overviews, hereby creating a new publication type. Overviews of reviews may have several advantages. For example, they can be conducted in a shorter time frame, they offer the opportunity of providing decision makers with a broader summary of the eviden…

The number of systematic reviews published in the peer-reviewed literature has increased dramatically in the last decade, and for good reason. They have become an essential resource for clinicians who want unbiased and current answers for their clinical questions; researchers and funders who want to identify the most c…

INTRODUCTION: IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common primary glomerular disease in adults. In recent years, there have been many significant advances in treating IgAN, with multiple successful clinical trials. We aim to determine the comparative effectiveness of available pharmaceutical interventions for treating Ig…

BACKGROUND: Losing a loved one to suicide is an event that can have strong and potentially traumatic impacts on the lives of the bereaved survivors, especially regarding their grief, which can be complicated. These bereaved individuals are also less likely to receive social support following their bereavement. However,…

The paradigm of scientific medicine is among the most influential epistemic shifts in the past century, wherein randomized controlled trials (RCTs) represent the impartial arbiter of medical claims. Nevertheless, not all RCTs agree, and systematic reviews are invoked to reconcile them. We theorize how tacitness-beliefs…

Smoking cessation at or around the time of cancer diagnosis is associated with significant improvements in survival across multiple tumor types. This umbrella review of 12 meta-analyses demonstrates that patients who quit smoking post-diagnosis have a 15-29% reduction in mortality in lung cancer, a 20% reduction in hea…

OBJECTIVE: This article briefly summarizes the results of existing research on metabolically healthy obesity in the context of health risks. METHODS: The PubMed database was searched for relevant meta-analyses addressing metabolically healthy obesity in the context of health risks. RESULTS: We included a total of 17…

BACKGROUND: A rise in systematic reviews and meta-analyses (SRMAs) within the neurosurgical literature has been fueled by an increasing amount of published metadata. In the pediatric niche, multiple pediatric-specific considerations must be made by pediatric neurosurgeons to ensure that their interpretation of pediatri…

This chapter discusses the meaning of evidence-based medicine and where it relates to randomised controlled trials, but also where it does not. The need for good quality evidence is stressed through a discussion of high failure rates in drug development and arguments against access to unlicensed (and largely untested)…

While the long-term negative effects of obesity on health is a well-studied phenomenon, its effects on acute illnesses seem to be the contrary. Several studies have indicated the possibility of an 'obesity paradox' in sepsis - where overweight and obese patients have better outcomes than normal weight patients. These m…

The Pearson r-from-Z approximation estimates the sample correlation (as an effect size measure) from the ratio of two quantities: the standard normal deviate equivalent (Z-score) corresponding to a one-tailed p-value divided by the square root of the total (pooled) sample size. The formula has utility in meta-analytic…

BACKGROUND: Rigorous, informative meta-analyses rely on availability of appropriate summary statistics or individual participant data. For continuous outcomes, especially those with naturally skewed distributions, summary information on the mean or variability often goes unreported. While full reporting of original tri…