EBM literature

The pre-appraised (EBM) literature comes in many forms and fit under essentially three basic categories:

Systematic reviews (meta analyses)
Surveillance tools
Clinical summaries

SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS

A systematic review is generally a large review article that summarizes a particular topic by using explicit methods to perform a thorough literature search and critical appraisal of individual studies to identify the valid and applicable evidence, and then uses appropriate techniques to combine these valid studies. Systematic reviews are generally based on a quantitative analysis of available data, but qualitative reviews, which adhere to the standards for gathering, analyzing and reporting evidence, do exist. Systematic reviews are published in many journals and found in a variety of other electronic sources.

A Meta Analysis is a type of systematic review that examines a number of valid studies on a topic and combines the results using accepted statistical methodology as if they were from one large study. Many small studies do not have enough subjects to yield statistically significant results, whereas meta analyses pool the data of smaller studies to increase the statistical significance. Because of this, clinicians tend to place meta analyses on the top of the evidence hierarchy.

EXAMPLE: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

SURVEILLANCE TOOLS

Unlike systematic reviews that summarize the data from multiple studies on a topic, the purpose of the surveillance tool is to survey/monitor the voluminous health literature (often hundreds of journals for a specialty) and select or highlight the articles that meet specific standards and warrant the attention of its readers. The selected articles are summarized and the context, methods, and clinical applications are often discussed by experts.

EXAMPLES: ACP Journal Club, bmjupdates+, Evidence-Based Medicine, Evidence-Based Mental Health, Evidence-Based Nursing, Evidence-Based Obstetrics and Gynecology

CLINICAL SUMMARIES

The centerpiece of these resources essentially is a compendium of short (consumable) summaries of the current state of the knowledge (and uncertainty) about clinical conditions (prevention, treatment, and/or diagnosis). The best of these include entries that are explicitly based on thorough searches and appraisals of the literature and created from the best available evidence from systematic reviews, RCTs and observational studies.

EXAMPLES: ACP's PIER, Clinical Evidence, FIRSTConsult, DynaMed

Page last updated: October 22, 2007 Questions or suggestions? Contact Chris Hooper-Lane