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Critical appraisal is central to the development of rational health care and evidence-based medicine, by applying it to questions of aetiology, clinical therapy, and health care management. The reader will learn how to assess the strengths and weaknesses of new studies, and how to conduct their own studies.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction
- 2: The importance of causal relationships in medicine and health care
- 3: Study designs which can demonstrate and test causation
- 4: The results obtained from studies of causation
- 5: Selection of subjects for study
- 6: Error and bias in observations
- 7: Confounding
- 8: Chance variation
- 9: Combining results from several studies: systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- 10: The diagnosis of causation
- 11: Critical appraisal in action: Introduction to Chapters 12-17
- 12: Critical appraisal of a randomized clinical trial
- 13: Critical appraisal of a randomized trial of a preventive agent
- 14: Critical appraisal of a prospective cohort study
- 15: Critical appraisal of a retrospective cohort study
- 16: Critical appraisal of a matched case control study
- 17: Critical appraisal of a large population-based case control study
- App 1: Answers to self-test questions
- App 2: Methods of statistical analysis: Formulae and worked examples
About the author
Mark Elwood studied medicine in the UK and epidemiology and public health in the US and Canada. He has been a Professor of epidemiology in Nottingham, England, Vancouver, Canada, Melbourne, Australia, and Dunedin and Auckland in New Zealand. His contributions have been in cancer aetiology, prevention and early diagnosis, but include studies of birth defects, health care outcomes, and many clinical topics. He first produced this text in 1988 and has used it and its developments in teaching his evidence based approach to clinical appraisal to health practitioners, health managers, and postgraduate and undergraduate students.
Summary
Critical appraisal is central to the development of rational health care and evidence-based medicine, by applying it to questions of aetiology, clinical therapy, and health care management. The reader will learn how to assess the strengths and weaknesses of new studies, and how to conduct their own studies.
Additional text
Review from previous edition The premise of the book is laudable in that critical thinking and evaluations of peer-reviewed literature is imperative in the training of public health and clinical researchers. In general, the book lays a foundation, establishes the issues of bias and bias control, and provides a framework for evaluation with examples.
