BACKGROUND The use of systematic literature review to inform evidence based practice in diagnostics is rapidly expanding. Although the primary diagnostic literature is extensive, studies are often of low methodological quality or poorly reported. There has been no rigorously evaluated, evidence based tool to assess the methodological quality of diagnostic studies. The primary objective of this ...

Narrow band imaging (NBI) is reported to improve the diagnostic accuracy of head and neck cancers. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of NBI in the literature. A systematic review was performed in PubMed, Web of Knowledge, and the Cochrane Library until March 2015. Two reviewers independently assessed articles and extracted data. Meta-analyses were performed in M...

decisions in healthcare should be based on information obtained according to the principles of evidence-based medicine (ebm). an increasing number of systematic reviews are published which summarize the results of prevalence studies. interpretation of the results of these reviews should be accompanied by an appraisal of the methodological quality of the included data and studies. the critical a...

The assessment of methodological quality (MQ) in biomedical research is an area of dynamic development over recent years globally. Understood as a complex and multidimensional construct, several groups have been proposed tools for its evaluation, between them our group has designed and validated scales to assess MQ in therapy, diagnosis and prognosis studies. However, as with other instruments,...

objective: the aim of the present study is to perform a systematic review of studies that investigated the prevalence of any kind of mental disorders in high school students in iran. method: a broad search was conducted in medline/pubmed, isi web of science, psychinfo, cinahl, embase, and three iranian databases, including iranpsych, iranmedex, and scientific information database (sid). to cove...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the diagnostic tools available for assessing maxillary transverse deficiencies. METHODS An electronic search of three databases was performed from their date of establishment to April 2015, with manual searching of reference lists of relevant articles. Articles were considered for inclusion if they reported the accuracy or reliability of a...

BACKGROUND MRI is considered to be the diagnostic tool of choice in diagnosing nerve root compromise among patients presenting with clinical suspicion of lumbo-sacral radiculopathy. There exists controversy among researchers and clinicians regarding the diagnostic utility and accuracy of MRI in detecting nerve root compromise and radiculopathy. This review evaluated 4 primary diagnostic accurac...