5,042,690 papers found

BACKGROUND: The use of mobile devices for delivering health-related services (mobile health [mHealth]) has rapidly increased, leading to a demand for summarizing the state of the art and practice through systematic reviews. However, the systematic review process is a resource-intensive and time-consuming process. Gener…

OBJECTIVES: To systematically survey Cochrane reviews' approaches to calculating, presenting, and interpreting pooled estimates of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We retrospectively selected 200 Cochrane reviews that met the eligibility criteria. Two researchers independently extra…

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the retraction status and reasons of non-Cochrane systematic reviews (SRs) in medicine. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: MEDLINE, Embase, Retraction Watch Database and Google Scholar were systematically searched to find all retracted non-Cochrane SRs. RESULTS: Of 159 non-Cochrane SRs in medicine retrac…

BACKGROUND: Young people's use of pornography and participation in sexting are commonly viewed as harmful behaviours. This paper reports findings from a 'review of reviews', which aimed to systematically identify and synthesise the evidence on pornography and sexting amongst young people. Here, we focus specifically on…

OBJECTIVES: New methodological approaches, such as the umbrella review, constitute an important pathway for synthesizing the scientific evidence provided from studies with a high level of evidence. This study aims to summarize the results on the effectiveness of temporary anchorage devices (TADs) and the factors that c…

Health policies and programs promoting mental health or preventing mental illness in the general public are under-recognized facets of primary prevention. Increasing awareness and adoption of such strategies could reduce the burden of mental illness in individuals, families, communities, and society as whole. We conduc…

OBJECTIVE: To analyse available review-level evidence on the effectiveness of population-level interventions in non-clinical settings to reduce alcohol consumption or related health or social harm. METHOD: Health, social policy and specialist review databases between 2002 and 2012 were searched for systematic reviews…

In this last paper of the series about risk of bias assessment, we introduce the application of risk of bias assessment results. Risk of bias assessment is one of the key steps in the assessment of quality of evidence. The risk of bias assessment results could be the "diagnosis" of individual studies, which helps decis…

CONTEXT: To date, the efficacy of nutritional interventions on oral mucositis (OM) in patients with cancer, and the quality of this evidence have not been explored. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this umbrella review was to provide a comprehensive evaluation of nutritional interventions for patients with cancer with OM, as we…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are a key setting to support improvements in the physical activity of young children. This umbrella review gathered and synthesised systematic review evidence of the effectiveness of interventions in the ECEC setting on the physical activity levels of children aged 0-6…

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a systematic review of the literature to identify existing online primary care quality improvement tools and resources to support organisational improvement related to the seven elements in the Primary Care Practice Improvement Tool (PC-PIT), with the identified tools and resources to progress to…

PURPOSE: A systematic review examining the clinical effectiveness of power versus manual toothbrushes was conducted by the Cochrane Collaborations Oral Health Group. Their review examined clinical trials conducted through 2001 and used international standards to identify, access, evaluate, analyze, and report the data.…

Bias means a systematic error and is a problem in research. Several bias tools are available, which are specific and depend on the study design. There are four overall categories of bias: selection bias, information bias, reporting bias, and other bias. This review summarises bias assessment in randomised controlled tr…

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally. The aim of this overview of systematic reviews was to compare the effectiveness of different pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. METHODS: A structured search of the Cochr…

Network meta-analysis (NMA) expands upon traditional meta-analysis by integrating three or more interventions. This allows comparing interventions using evidence from trials that have compared pairs of interventions directly, and indirect evidence through common comparators. We provide an overview of NMA concepts and c…

Thrombocytosis is a common finding and is a frequent cause of referral for further investigation. The MPL Baltimore (Lys39Asn) mutation has been reported as a cause of thrombocytosis in 7% of African Americans. We describe an 11-month-old Ethiopian Jewish boy referred for evaluation of thrombocytosis who was found to b…

Primary small cell carcinoma of urinary bladder is a rare but aggressive disease with poor prognosis and a high mortality rate. It accounts for less than 1 % of all the primary cancers seen in the urinary bladder. Diagnosis and management of this entity poses a challenge to the clinician due to the lack of a standardiz…