AFTB Lecture Series I

Posted by admin in Medical on 10 3rd, 2008 | no responses

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).