"Best help with evidence-based medicine available." Marty Gabica
MD, Chief Medical Officer, Healthwise
"I am full of admiration for this terrific little book...which
is written clearly, simply and appropriately for a starter
audience. Those with more experience...can benefit too. I know of
no other book that has succeeded so well in getting everything
important covered so succinctly, which the authors have done
brilliantly well " Richard Lehman, MA, BM, BCh, Oxford, &
Blogger, BMJ Journal Watch
The shocking truth is that most scientific research that informs
most doctors' medical decisions is unreliable or is of uncertain
reliability. And many doctors and other health care professionals
do not realize this. Every day patients are harmed by unfortunate
health care choices-and some of them die because of it. Too often
this happens because of problems with the information provided to
the patient-or its lack-where different information could have
resulted in a very different choice-and a very different
outcome.
The good news is that you only need to know a few,
easy-to-understand statistics, and you need a few basic concepts to
help you understand bias and chance.
Medical evidologists and clinical improvement experts, Sheri Ann
Strite and Michael E. Stuart MD, provide you with
easy-to-understand guidance.
In a few hours, you can learn basic critical appraisal skills to
help you evaluate clinical trials and other medical research
studies of therapeutic interventions.
Based on their popular simplified and tool-based approach, the
authors show you how to evaluate the reliability and clinical
usefulness of clinical trials. Written for physicians and other
health care professionals, this book is written in
easy-to-understand terms that even the layperson can understand and
put to use.
What is Unique About This Book
Practical-information can be applied instantly Concise-can be
read in a few hours
Clear-key concepts are explained in easy-to-understand
language
Complete enough-We give you the basics you need to evaluate most
clinical trials of therapies. We don't bog you down with details
you do not need to know. With rare exception, or unless you are a
researcher, you don't need to know such concepts as the different
observational study types, you don't need to understand power
calculations, and you only need a few, easy-to-understand
statistics-we give you simple explanations that you can even use in
explaining results to patients.
You will learn that the primary key to understanding the
reliability of studies is largely about study design, execution and
study performance outcomes. You will learn-
-Experiments versus Observations: The quick and easy way to
distinguish between experiments and observations-and why you need
to know the difference.
-Assessing Selection Bias: 5 Essential Questions Important
considerations include who was studied, how were they selected for
study, are there enough people, how were they assigned to their
study groups, and are the groups balanced?
-Assessing Performance Bias: 2 Essential Questions What is being
studied, and what is it being compared to? What else happened to
study subjects in the course of the study?
-Assessing Measurement & Attrition Bias: 2 Essential
Questions What information was collected, and how was it collected?
What data are missing, and does missing data meaningfully distort
the study results?
-Assessing Assessment Bias: 2 Essential Questions How is the
difference in outcomes between the groups evaluated? What are those
differences and how are they expressed?
-Understanding Chance
-Easy Ways to Evaluate Results
-Safety
-Evaluating Authors' Conclusions
This book will help your patients better avoid what has happened
to millions of patients-insufficient or misleading information
leading to unfortunate choices that resulted in bad outcomes.
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