Overview
Main description
The #1 guide to the principles and clinical applications of evidence-based medicine has just gotten better!
A Doody's Core Title ESSENTIAL PURCHASE for 2011!
No other resource helps you to put key evidence-based medicine protocols into daily clinical practice better than Users' Guides to the Medical Literature.
An instant classic in its first edition, this detailed, yet highly readable reference demystifies the statistical, analytical, and clinical principles of evidence-based medicine, giving you a hands-on, practical resource that no other text can match.
Here, you'll learn how to distinguish solid medical evidence from poor medical evidence, devise the best search strategies for each clinical question, critically appraise the medical literature, and optimally tailor evidence-based medicine for each patient. The new second edition of this landmark resource is now completely revised and refreshed throughout, with expanded coverage of both basic and advanced issues in using evidence-based medicine in clinical practice.
FEATURES:
- Completely revised and updated to reflect the enormous expansion in medical research and evidence-based resources since the first edition
- Innovative organization guides you from the fundamentals of using the medical literature to the more advanced strategies and skills for use in every day patient care situations
- Abundant and current real-world examples drawn from the medical literature are woven throughout, and include important related principles and pitfalls in using medical literature in patient care decisions
- Practical focus on the key issues in evidence-based practice: What are the results? Are the results valid? How to I apply to results to the care of my patients?
- More than 60 internationally recognized editors and contributors from the U.S., Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia -- the best of the best in the discipline
- NEW coverage on how to:
--Avoid being misled by biased presentations of research findings
--Interpret the significance of clinical trials that are discontinued early
--Influence clinician behavior to improve patient care
--Apply key strategies for teaching evidence-based medicine
Also look for JAMAevidence.com, a new interactive database for the best practice of evidence based medicine.
Table of contents
Foreword
Preface
Part A. The Foundations
1. How to Use the Medical Literature—and This Book—to Improve Your Patient Care
2. The Philosophy of Evidence-Based Medicine
3. What Is the Question?
4. Finding the Evidence
5. Why Study Results Mislead: Bias and Random Error
Part B. Therapy
6. Therapy (Randomized Trials)
7. Does Treatment Lower Risk? Understanding the Results
8. Confidence Intervals
9. Advanced Topics in the Validity of Therapy Trials
9.1 An Illustration of Bias and Random Error
9.2 Surprising Results of Randomized Trials
9.3 Randomized Trials Stopped Early for Benefit
9.4 The Principle of Intention to Treat
9.5 N-of-1 Randomized Controlled Trials
9.6 Clinical Decision Support Systems
10. Advanced Topics in the Results of Therapy Trials
10.1 Hypothesis Testing
10.2 Understanding the Results: More About Odds Ratios
10.3 What Determines the Width of the Confidence Interval?
10.4 Composite endpoints
10.5 Measuring Patients’ Experience
11. Advanced Topics in Applying the Results of Therapy Trials
11.1 Applying Results to Individual Patients
11.2 Example Numbers Needed to Treat
11.3 Dealing with Misleading Presentations of Clinical Trial Results
11.4 Surrogate Outcomes
11.5 Qualitative Research
Part C. Harm (Observational Studies)
12. Harm (Observational Studies)
13. Advanced Topics in Harm: Correlation and Regression
Part D. Diagnosis
14. The Process of Diagnosis
15. Differential Diagnosis
16. Diagnostic Tests
17. Advanced Topics in Diagnosis
17.1 Spectrum Bias
17.2 Examples of Likelihood Ratios
17.3 Measuring Agreement Beyond Chance
17.4 Clinical Prediction Rules
Part E. Prognosis
18. Prognosis
Part F. Summarizing the Evidence
19. Summarizing the Evidence
20. Advanced Topics in Systematic Reviews
20.1 Reporting Bias
20.2 Fixed-Effects and Random-Effects Models
20.3 Making Sense of Variability in Study Results
20.4 When to Believe a Subgroup Analysis
Part G. Moving From Evidence to Action
21. How to Use a Patient Management Recommendation
22. Advanced Topics in Moving from Evidence to Action
22.1 Economic Analysis
22.2 Decision Making and the Patient
22.3 Moving From Evidence to Action: Recommendations About Screening
22.4 Grading Recommendations
22.5 Drug Class Effects
22.6 Parallel but Separate Goals: Evidence-Based Practitioners and Evidence-Based Care
22.7 Changing Behavior to Apply Best Evidence in Practice
22.8 Teachers’ Guides to the Users' Guides
Glossary
Index
Author comments
Gordon Guyatt, MD, MSc
Departments of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Medicine
Faculty of Health Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Drummond Rennie, MD
JAMA, Chicago, IL
Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Maureen O. Meade, MD, FRCPC, MSc
Departments of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Faculty of Health Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Deborah J. Cook, MD, MSc
Department of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Faculty of Health Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
