03Oct

AFTB Lecture Series I

Medical

A/Prof Anthony F T Brown lecture series aims to contextualize the most pertinent evidence based information pertaining to acute medical emergencies in summative statements. The principal sources for the evidence based material include:

Textbooks

  • Evidence-based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM. Straus SE, Richardson WS et al eds. 3rdedition 2005, Churchill Livingstone. The original and best EBM handbook with a support website
  • Evidence-based on Call: Acute Medicine. Ball C, Phillips R eds. Churchill Livingstone 2001. Utilises likelihood ratios (LR+, LR-) to sequentially alter pre- and post-test probabilities based on Bayes’ theorem, via odds ratios. Free website with well referenced topics (but not updated since June 2002). Useful for finessing clinical wisdom.
  • Emergency Medicine. Emergency and Acute Medicine: Diagnosis and Management. Brown AFT, Cadogan MD. 5th edition 2006, Hodder Arnold. Strong emphasis on acute medicine ‘on-take’ medical admissions.

Journals

  • Evidence-based Medicine. BMJ Publishing Group. Bi-monthly. A digest of the best new research. RSS updates available 
  • ACP Journal Club. American College of Physicians. 
  • Useful EBM papers
    • Grade Working Group. Grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. BMJ 2004; 328:1-8. Deeks J, Altman D. 
    • Diagnostic tests 4: likelihood ratios. BMJ 2004; 329: 168-9. Attia J, Nair B, Sibbritt D et al.
    • Generating pre-test probabilities: a neglected area in clinical decision making. MJA 2004; 180: 449- 454. (Editorial Scott IA 438-9.) Lipsky A, Lewis R. Ann Emerg Med 2005;45:291-4

DataBases

  • Centre for Evidence-based Medicine, University of Toronto. The ‘homesite’ of EBM, including handheld (Pocket PC or Palm) resources and research
  • Cochrane Library. Includes four main databases
  • BMJ Clinical Evidence. BMJ Knowledge, BMJ Publishing Group.  New EBM website from 2007.
  • UpToDate. Evidence-based, peer-reviewed topic-based information resource.
  • Trip Database. Focused on finding the highest-EBM quality material available on-line, with three free searches before charge a fee. User-friendly and fast.
  • BestBETS. Brief, evidence-based answers to real-life clinical questions sorted by title or topic, plus other useful EBM resources
  • GoPubMed: Very useful site for review of PubMed journals - the most simple overlay of what is generally a difficult site to navigate
  • Google Scholar. Improving access all the time, but frustrating as articles not arranged chronologically (unlike with PubMed).
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Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Medical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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