SORT: Strength of recommendation taxonomy.

In February 2004, American Family Physician (AFP), the Journal of the American Board of Family Practice (JABFP), and the Journal of Family Practice (JFP) will simultaneously publish an article titled “Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT): A Patient-centered Approach to Grading Evidence in the Medical Literature.” The purpose of the article is to present the SORT system, which was created in a collaborative effort by the editors of multiple family medicine journals and the Family Practice Inquiries Network. SORT is intended to provide authors and readers of family medicine journals with a simple, user-friendly system for grading the strength of diagnostic and treatment recommendations that appear in the articles in those journals. With the advent of evidencebased medicine, many researchers, journals, and organizations have developed systems for grading the strength of research evidence. Indeed, in 2002, the Agency for Health Care Quality and Research reported that there were more than 100 such evidence-grading systems. Many of these systems are too complicated for use by the clinicians who need to apply evidence to patient care, and the systems use such varied rating scales that researchers and authors cannot keep track of them. In fact, a given source of evidence will often be assigned SORT: Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy