386,619 papers found

As the volume of biomedical information escalates and its uses diversify, systematic reviews and meta-analyses - the compilation, selection and statistical analysis of pooled results from similar studies - are becoming an increasingly accepted method in the evaluation of healthcare technologies and interventions. We th…

Ambitious programs have recently been advocated or launched to create genomewide databases for meta-analysis of association between DNA markers and phenotypes of medical and/or social concern. A necessary but not sufficient condition for success in association mapping is that the data give accurate estimates of both ge…

The increase in the number of published systematic reviews and meta-analyses over the last few years has highlighted the need to establish guidelines for their publication, in order to facilitate their interpretation and use. The Quality of Reporting of Meta-analyses Conference, which took place in 1996, resulted in th…

A meta-analysis of growth hormone data showing similar double amplitudes of 36 and 34% of the mean from the fit of cosine curves with periods of 1.3 and 1.0 year, respectively, suggests the desirability of analyzing available time series on variables of interest in biomedicine, to explore heretofore unknown longer-than…

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Guidelines are supposed to be helpful in clinical practice. Guidelines are also supposed to rest upon the evidence that there is. In the field of clinical nutrition the problem is that many clinical trials are not conclusive because they are underpowered and sometimes have an inferior design. RECENT…

In the present issue of, Frank and Matthay review the physiologic mechanisms that lead to ventilator-induced lung injury. Our greater understanding of basic physiologic principles has already had a major impact on the treatment of critically ill patients. Novel strategies to limit ventilator-induced lung injury have no…

A CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT: Several large randomised studies have demonstrated a reduction in mortality due to breast cancer of around 30% in women aged over 50, with the development of systematic mammography. There are data also suggesting an identical benefit in women aged 40 to 49, when screening is intensified. A rece…

Science is supposed to be cumulative, but scientists only rarely cumulate evidence scientifically. This means that users of research evidence have to cope with a plethora of reports of individual studies with no systematic attempt made to present new results in the context of similar studies. Although the need to synth…

Using 14 meta-analyses that included both published (n = 199) and unpublished (n = 50) randomized trials, we evaluated the utility of different analytical approaches to detect, assess robustness, and minimize publication bias in meta-analysis. The rank correlation and graphical tests indicated funnel plot asymmetry in…

Postoperative radiotherapy is classically proposed after surgical resection in case of a high risk of local recurrence (incomplete resection and nodal invasion especially mediastinal). Its interest was shown by non-randomized trials. Nevertheless, several randomized trials and one meta-analysis of them have recently qu…

It is widely held that random-effects summary effect estimates are more conservative than fixed-effects summaries in epidemiologic meta-analysis. This view is based on the fact that random-effects summaries have higher estimated variances and, consequently, wider confidence intervals than fixed-effects summaries when t…

The results of a randomized clinical trial can be reported using relative and/or absolute estimators of treatment effect. These various measures convey different information, and the choice can influence the physician's appreciation of the size of treatment effect and, subsequently, treatment decisions. We compare the…

The role of biological monitoring (BM) in the prevention of exposure to toxic metals has currently acquired considerable importance. However, in the near future the usefulness of BM in occupational medicine could be reduced by the fact that exposure to toxic substances will progressively decrease and consequently probl…

BACKGROUND: Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) are common following abdominal surgery, contributing significantly to perioperative morbidity and mortality, prolonged hospitalization, and increased healthcare costs. Although various non-pharmacological strategies are frequently recommended in perioperative car…

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…

Study coding is an essential component of the research synthesis process. Data extracted during study coding serve as a direct link between the included studies and the synthesis results, allowing reviewers to justify claims about the findings from a set of related studies. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide au…

BACKGROUND: Rare liver lesions and diseases have seldomly aroused major interest of researchers. For most guidelines, presumably similar clinical conditions are pooled without detailed investigations of singularities that they present. MAIN TEXT: A multidisciplinary project aiming to establish evidence-based therapies…

Clinical trials in head and neck cancer (HNC) face multiple challenges including low global incidence, excessive patient comorbidity rate, high treatment-related toxicity and more recently a changing tumor biology landscape. As clinical trials evolve to address new knowledge about HNC biology, the overall pool of eligi…

Radiotherapy is the primary treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and combination chemotherapy can enhance treatment outcomes for locoregionally advanced disease. The Intergroup 0099 study using concurrent-adjuvant cisplatin-based chemoradiotherapy was the first trial to demonstrate a survival benefit. Since then, ther…

Irritable bowel syndrome with predominant diarrhea (IBS-D) is a type of functional gastrointestinal disorder mainly marked by abdominal discomfort and frequent loose stools. Its complex pathogenesis involves multiple factors, such as low-grade intestinal inflammation, brain-gut axis dysregulation, and visceral hypersen…