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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