This page will allow you to submit an critical care article that you reviewed. This form will help you review the article. Once submitted, it will be posted on the message board.
Sources:"ahsn.lhsc.on.ca/cat/" form and "http://www.ebem.org/cats/formulate.html" descriptions.
Name
E-mail
URL
Title
Authors
Source
List the title of the article.
List authors by last name comma, first initial and 2nd author same way, if more add et all.
Journal name, year, volume, start page # and end page #.
Give a brief summary of the article in these terms:
Population - what patients were included and excluded
Interventions - therapeutic interventions, diagnostic interventions, exposures, time
Outcomes - what was measured and/or counted
I. Are the results of the study valid?
II. What were the results?
III. Will the results help me in caring for my patients?
Primary Guides:
A. Was the assignment of patients to treatments randomized? Randomization is a technique which gives every patient an equal chance of winding up in any particular arm of a controlled clinical trial.
Details:
B. Were all patients who entered the trial properly accounted for and attributed at its conclusion?
Details:
1. Was the follow up complete?
2. Were patients analyzed in the groups to which they were randomized?
Details:
Details:
Secondary Guides:
C. Were patients, health workers, and study personnel "blind" to treatment?
Details:
D. Were groups similar at the start of the trial?
E. Aside from the experimental intervention, were the groups treated equally?
Details:
Details:
A. How large was the treatment effect?
B. How precise was the estimate of the treatment effect?
A. Can the results be applied to my patient care?
B. Were all clinically important outcomes considered?
C. Are the likely treatment benefits worth the potential harms and costs?
Details:
Details:
Details:
Results and
Bottom Line:
Two or three line summary and conclusions. Do not make recommendations stronger than justified by the literature.
What happened - track flow through study, how many patients presented, were excluded, dropped out, completed protocol, etc.
Blinding is the "masking" or concealment from study subjects, caregivers, or others involved in the study of any detail(s) of the study which could introduce Bias. For example, not telling patients or doctors which patient gets placebo or actual drug; or not telling radiologists the clinical assessment of patients whose films they are reading.
Null hypothesis is what do you do when you want others to be maximally impressed with what you do? You DECREASE EXPECTATIONS, then what you do accomplish looks even better! The null hypothesis is the assumption that there is no difference between the groups and that the treatment you are studying has no effect. Any difference in outcome actually observed between the groups is then evaluated in relationship to the "zero expectation" hypothesis. The p-value is the probability that the difference(s) observed between two or more groups in a study would occurred if there were no differences between the groups other than those created by random selection.
