Diagnostic tests
Resources for teaching LR etc
Questions about translating research evidence into practice
< Back to search results- Format Audio, Texts
- Language/s English
- Target Audience Self-directed learning
- EBM Stage 4 - Decision making
- Duration <5 mins
- Difficulty Introductory
Key Concepts addressed
- 3-3a Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for you?
- 3-2a Do the outcomes measured matter to you?
- 3-2b Are you very different from the people studied?
Details
In this section:
- Question 1: Isn’t anything worth trying when a patient has a life-threatening condition?
- Question 2: Although patients might want to know if a treatment ‘works’, suppose they don’t want all the details?
- Question 3: Statistics are confusing – should patients really have to look at the numbers?
- Question 4: How can someone know that the research evidence applies to them?
- Question 5: Won’t genetic testing – and ‘personalized medicine’ – mean doctors can work out the specific treatment needed in every individual and make all this unnecessary?
- Question 6: If someone has a condition that is being studied in an ongoing clinical trial, how do they find out about this if their doctor doesn’t know about it?
- Question 7: What’s the best way of telling if the evidence (on the web or elsewhere) is reliable?
- Question 8: Are there reliable sources of information that can be recommended?
- Question 9: How should people avoid being ‘labelled’ with an ‘illness’ and getting unnecessary treatments?
Ichalmers 13:42pm Mon 20 Feb 2012
I suggest starting from scratch with this section. I gave up cutting and pasting the erros about a third of the way through. Use bolded italics for questions Replace 'using a bar chart.3' by 'using a bar chart.[3]' Replace 'If all 100 had taken blood pressure drug B, then ten would get heart disease or have a stroke and three would avoid getting' What will happen to 100 people like you in the next 10 years? heart disease or having a stroke. by 'If all 100 had taken blood pressure drug B, then ten would get heart disease or have a stroke and three would avoid getting heart disease or having a stroke.' And use 'What will happen to 100 people like you in the next 10 years?' as legend for the Figure. Reproduce Table on page 150 Remove (it's a vignette) DON’T BE FOOLED BY EYE-CATCHING STATISTICS ‘Let’s say the risk of having a heart attack in your fifties is 50 per cent higher if you have a high cholesterol. That sounds pretty bad. Let’s say the extra risk of having a heart attack if you have a high cholesterol is only 2 per cent. That sounds OK to me. But they’re the same (hypothetical figures). Let’s try this. Out of a hundred men in their fifties with normal cholesterol, four will be expected to have a heart attack; whereas out of a hundred men with high cholesterol, six will be expected to have a heart attack. That’s two extra heart attacks per hundred.’ Goldacre B. Bad Science. London: Fourth Estate 2008, pp239-40.