E-DRUG: How to read a paper (2)

E-DRUG: How to read a paper (2)
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Education and debate Saturday 26 July 1997

How to read a paper

Getting your bearings (deciding what the paper is about)

Trisha Greenhalgh
                                                              
This is the second of 10 articles introducing non-experts to
finding medical articles and assessing their value
    
                     Summary points
    
Many papers published in medical journals have potentially
serious methodological flaws
                                                                                                                                  
When deciding whether a paper is valid and relevant to your
practice, first establish what specific clinical question it
addressed
                                                                                    
Questions to do with drug treatment or other medical
interventions should be addressed by double blind, randomised
controlled trials
                                                                                                                         
Questions about prognosis require longitudinal cohort studies,
and those about causation require either cohort or case-control
studies
                                                                
Case reports, though methodologically weak, can be produced
rapidly and have a place in alerting practitioners to
adverse drug reactions

Note from the moderator:

The full article can be accessed by those with internet access
(URL: http://www.bmj.com).
Syed Rizwanuddin Ahmad
Email: srahmad@essential.org

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