Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials and evidence informed palliative care

Preparing and updating systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health care.

People providing health care tend to turn to review articles rather than reports of primary research when seeking information to guide their practices. For this reason, the process of reviewing the results of primary research must respect scientific principles. Reviews must be kept up to date and disseminated in appropriate ways to the people who make decisions about health care, including poli...

Evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews, and guidelines in interventional pain management: Part 2: Randomized controlled trials.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a shift in medical paradigms and about solving clinical problems, acknowledging that intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale are insufficient grounds for clinical decision-making. The importance of randomized trials has been created by the concept of the hierarchy of evidence in guiding therapy. Even though the concept of hier...

Addressing Attrition Bias in Randomized Controlled Trials: Considerations for Systematic Evidence Reviews

Blindness in Randomized Controlled Trials

In combination with randomization, blinding or masking is an important factor in randomized controlled trials (RCTs), particularly in trials that assess therapeutic effects. Here an attempt is made to explain blindness and why it is important. In clinical trials, blinding is defined as the condition imposed on a study in which study participants, health care providers and assessors collecting o...

Primary care management of acute herpes zoster: systematic review of evidence from randomized controlled trials.

Although a number of randomized controlled trials of treatment for herpes zoster have been performed, there is no consensus on how it should be managed in general practice. A systematic review of existing trials, including meta-analysis, was performed to determine the efficacy of available therapies in reducing the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia. The treatments studied included antiviral a...