BACKGROUND It has been 10 years since we carried out a systematic search of the literature on birth defect risk in infants born following assisted reproductive technology (ART) compared with non-ART infants. Because of changes to ART practice since that review and the publication of more studies the objective of this review was to include these more recent studies to estimate birth defect risk ...

Operations management (OM) theory suggests that professional services have some distinct operational challenges. There is an emerging consensus that professional services are changing, due to the socio-economic and political climates in which they operate. In order to investigate these issues a systematic literature review was undertaken. This paper makes a contribution by exploring the OM lite...

PURPOSE We performed a meta-analysis to ascertain the efficacy and safety of the currently practiced 3-day antibiotic therapy for cystitis versus prolonged therapy (5 days or longer) to relieve symptoms and to achieve bacteriological cure. METHODS The Cochrane Library, the Cochrane Renal Group's Register of trials, EMBASE and MEDLINE were searched to identify all randomized controlled trials ...

BACKGROUND According to WHO Global Health Estimates, tuberculosis (TB) is among the top ten causes of global mortality and ranks second after cardiovascular disease in most high-burden regions. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we investigated the role of second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure as a risk factor for TB among children and adults. METHODS AND FINDINGS We performed a systemat...

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of statins type or even when grouping statins by hydrophilic or hydrophobic nature on prostate cancer risk. A literature search was performed without language restrictions using the databases of PubMed (1984.1-2015.3), MEDLINE (1984.1-2015.3), and EMBASE (1990.1-2015.3). Two independent reviewers appraised eligible studies and extracted data. W...

OBJECTIVE To conduct a systematic review of randomised trials of patient decision aids in improving decision making and outcomes. DESIGN We included randomised trials of interventions providing structured, detailed, and specific information on treatment or screening options and outcomes to aid decision making. Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data on several evaluation crite...

OBJECTIVES To examine the associations of coffee consumption with the serum uric acid (SUA) level, hyperuricaemia (HU) and gout. DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis. DATA SOURCES AND STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA A comprehensive literature search up to April 2015, using PubMed and EMBASE databases, was conducted to identify the observational researches that examined the associations of ...

With growing competition and dynamicity in the tastes and preferences of customers, there is a recent growth in the number of supply chain disruptions as well; for e.g. the recent flood in Thailand affecting the global operations of hard-disk manufacturers like Seagate, Western Digital to car makers Honda and Toyota. Thus an increased need is felt by these firms to adopt effective risk mitigati...

BACKGROUND Social capital is considered to be an important determinant of life expectancy and cardiovascular health. Evidence on the association between social capital and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer was systematically reviewed. METHODS Prospective studies examining the association of social capital with these outcomes were systematically sought in Medline, Em...

BACKGROUND Many patients with kidney failure "crash" onto dialysis or initiate dialysis in an unplanned fashion. There are varying definitions, but essentially, a patient is labeled as having a crash dialysis start if he or she has little to no care by a nephrologist prior to starting dialysis. A patient is labeled as having an unplanned dialysis start when he or she starts dialysis with a cath...