week ten

Question 1

steps involved in systematic reviews

Answer 1

· Formulate a structured clinical question (PICO)
· Conduct an extensive search documenting search strategy
· Select studies for inclusion, justifying any exclusions (ie, pre-defined inclusion criteria)
· Assessment of methodological quality of included studies (according to pre-determined criteria)
· Abstraction of relevant data
· Data synthesis (meta-analysis if appropriate)

Question 2

understanding forrest plots

Answer 2

• anything that crosses the line of no effect is not significant
• diamond is the overall result of the meta analysis
• the point of the diamond are the confidence intervals
• if diamond points touch the line = not significant