376,071 papers found

Adjuvant chemotherapy, initiated following surgery, aims at controlling "microscopic" metastatic disease before its progression to a "clinical" recurrence. Its efficiency in localized breast cancer was officially demonstrated in 1992 in the Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group meta-analysis. This analysis…

OBJECTIVES: To present the contour-enhanced funnel plot as an aid to differentiating asymmetry due to publication bias from that due to other factors. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: An enhancement to the usual funnel plot is proposed that allows the statistical significance of study estimates to be considered. Contour line…

Echinacea preparations are widely used for common cold. Many consumers and healthcare professionals are not aware that products available under the term Echinacea may differ in their composition, due to the use of different species, plant parts, extraction methods and addition of other components. In 2005, a Cochrane r…

Systematic reviews can help practitioners keep abreast of the medical literature by summarizing large bodies of evidence and helping to explain differences among studies on the same question. A systematic review involves the application of scientific strategies, in ways that limit bias, to the assembly, critical apprai…

We study prevalence-dependent diagnostic accuracy measures, specifically, positive and negative predictive values. These measures permit an assessment of the clinical utility of diagnostic tests across populations with different disease prevalences. In many cases, prevalence may not be known with certainty and the eval…

The subject which has been developed within the Workshop "the health services Epidemiology in health Agency: the initiatives, the activities, the structures. Direct and indirect evidences", held in Rome, in November 15th, 2001, is introduced and updated. After a historical excursus, the topical interest in the health s…

Seven oral triptans, which differ on a range of attributes important for treatment selection, are now available for treating migraine. US neurologists were surveyed to assess the relative importance of treatment attributes, prespecified by clinical relevance and availability of controlled study data, for selecting amon…

We applied traditional methods of gathering, integrating and summarizing findings of current literature, with new approaches for assessing the cost effectiveness of two treatments for hepatorenal syndrome (HRS). Findings of this cost effectiveness study are used to form a proposal for a multi-center prospective clinica…

Diagnostic testing can be used to discriminate subjects with a target disorder from subjects without it. Several indicators of diagnostic performance have been proposed, such as sensitivity and specificity. Using paired indicators can be a disadvantage in comparing the performance of competing tests, especially if one…

Coxibs are a new group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which inhibit cyclooxygenase-2 selectively. They can be prescribed for treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, primary dysmenorrhea, and acute pain. Their main advantage is a reduction in the frequency of serious gastrointestinal compl…

An examination is made of a meta-analysis by Attewell, Glase and McFadden which concludes that bicycle helmets prevent serious injury, to the brain in particular, and that there is mounting scientific evidence of this. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) initiated and directed the meta-analysis of 16 observat…

J. D. Smith and J. P. Minda (2000) conducted a meta-analysis of 30 data sets reported in the classification literature that involved use of the "5-4" category structure introduced by D. L. Medin and M. M. Schaffer (1978). The meta-analysis was aimed at investigating exemplar and elaborated prototype models of categoriz…

(1) Iloprost, a vasodilatory prostacyclin analogue administered by infusion, is indicated for second-line therapy in patients with severe ischaemia of the lower limbs, when surgical revascularisation fails or is contraindicated. (2) In thromboangiitis obliterans the clinical file on iloprost has remained inadequate sin…

Meta-analyses of the relationship between dietary fat and breast cancer risk using different methodologies have reported conflicting results. This investigation compares methodologic aspects of meta-analyses of patient data (MAP) with meta-analyses of data from the literature (MAL), and computes relative risk (RR) esti…

This article highlights factors that may cause bias in individual controlled trials or meta-analysis of zidovudine (AZT) in HIV disease. The overall benefit of AZT and antiretroviral drug combinations in the progression of HIV disease is probably greater than has been or can ever be shown in an ethical controlled trial…

Currently, North American intergroup trials are conducted according to the Intergroup Guidelines, which require that a lead group take responsibility for data management. Intergroup studies conducted in this manner have been very successful in rapidly accruing large numbers of patients to trials addressing significant…

Many randomised controlled trials compare treatments that will produce only moderate differences in outcome, but these differences can be clinically important. However, they are difficult to assess reliably and require a large amount of randomised evidence. This can be achieved through large prospective randomised tria…

We discuss methods for summarizing epidemiologic studies of dose-response. The data from such a study typically appear as a series of dose-specific relative risks, with one category serving as the common reference group. We present methods for estimating the dose-response parameters from single and multiple study repor…

Earlier studies demonstrated that moclobemide has good efficacy as an antidepressant. Its efficacy was comparable to reference antidepressants, both in endogenous and non-endogenous depression. A meta-analysis was performed of recent data from more than 2000 patients who had participated in double-blind trials with moc…

BACKGROUND: Invasive intra-arterial blood pressure (IABP) monitoring using an arterial catheter carries both risks and practical limitations. Noninvasive blood pressure (NIBP) monitoring using the widely adopted oscillometric automated brachial cuff is performed in nearly all patients in acute care settings at some poi…