Appraise the evidence

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The Appraisal

The following questions are appropriate to appraise the literature:

Are the results of the study valid?

Primary Guides:

• Was the assignment of patients to treatments randomized?
• Were all patients who entered the trial properly accounted for and attributed at its conclusion?
• Was follow up complete?
• Were patients analyzed in the groups to which they were randomized?

Secondary Guides:

• Were patients, health workers, and study personnel "blind" to treatment?
• Were the groups similar at the start of the trial?
• Aside from the experimental intervention, were the groups treated equally?

What were the results?

• How large was the treatment effect?
• How precise was the estimate of the treatment effect?
  

Will the results help me in caring for my patients?

• Can the results be applied to my patient care?
• Were all clinically important outcomes considered?
• Are the likely treatment benefits worth the potential harms and costs?
  
  

The PEDro scale is a valid measure of the methodological quality of clinical trials. DeMorton (2009) suggests it is valid to sum PEDro scale item scores to obtain a total score that can be treated as interval level measurement and subjected to parametric statistical analysis.

Resources

The Pedro Tutorial is designed to help readers of clinical trials differentiate those trials which are likely to be valid from those that might not be. It also looks briefly at how therapists might use the findings of properly performed studies to make clinical decisions.

Understand simple statistics with our Test Diagnostics page

Recent Related Research (from Pubmed)

References

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