Interpreting the Medical Literature: A Clinician's GuideAbstract: An approach to reading and understanding research articles appearing in medical journals is provided for clinicians and based on the principles and concepts of epidemiology. This approach has been successfully used with family medicine medical school residents. The curriculum of this guide falls under 3 principal themes: study design, making measurements, and interpretation. The study design chapters consider descriptive and explanatory studies, and 3 different design approaches (case-control; cross-sectional and follow-up; experimental). Interpretation chapters consider the varied aspects of: data distributions, averages, and the norm; statistical significance; sensitivity, specificity, and predictive capability; assessing risk; and identifying causes. (wz). |
Contents
The Experimental | 5 |
Sensitivity Specificity | 9 |
General Considerations | 17 |
Copyright | |
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allocation amoxicillin anticoagulants assess authors bacteremia bacteriuria bias biases bladder cancer blood cultures breast cancer carrots case-control design case-control study cause characteristics classified clinical trial clinicians cohort compared comparison group control group control subjects controlled trial develop diagnostic distribution drug effect Engl error estimate estrogens evaluating example experience experimental febrile fever Figure follow-up design follow-up study frequency habits heart attack heart disease high blood pressure hospital hypertension interpretation intervention investigators JAMA journals matching mean measurements methods microcephaly myocardial infarction Nofib normal occur outcome p-value patients Pediatrics penicillin percent physician placebo practice predictive value prevalence problem random random allocation readers reading recall bias recurrent relative risk retrospective Reye syndrome RMSF sample serum single-dose smoking statistically significant stilbestrol strategy study designs study population symptoms syndrome technique therapy tion treatment urinary-tract infections variability VISUAL ACUITY white-blood-cell count women