Evidence Reviews

Natural history and prognosis for musculoskeletal rehabilitation students

Understanding the natural history and prognosis of musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions and injuries creates a great foundation when starting clinical rotations as a physical therapy student. In this blog, Chris shares his own evolving document which gathers various papers together in one centralized location to help him (and others) find the natural history and prognosis of most MSK conditions

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Diagnostics Studies: how to get started with appraising the evidence

This blog provides an introduction to critically appraising diagnostic studies. Find out what questions are important to ask as you go through a paper.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Cancer Screening Debate

Here we will address the problem with cancer screening interventions regarding the potential benefits and harms of these strategies.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Testing diagnostic tests: Sensitivity and specificity

In this post you are going to figure out how to interpret the evaluation of diagnostic tests through sensitivity and specificity.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Predictive value: an introduction

This blog describes what is meant by a positive predictive value and a negative predictive value, their purpose and how they can be interpreted

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Less is More: The dangers of too much medicine

Thankfully, this “less is more” idea seems to be a movement gaining serious momentum in the medical world to “wind back the harms of too much medicine”.

Evidence Reviews

Are screening tests always useful? A case study of a genetic test for coeliac disease

Diagnostic tests can be big business. Angel Wong reports on one case study highlighting how deceptive such tests can be.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Albuminuria protein & Pre-test Probabilities

Pre-test probabilities can help clinicians select and interpret diagnostic tests. To see a recent, real life application check out Aaron’s review of “Diagnostic Accuracy of Point-of-Care Tests for Detecting Albuminuria” from the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Learning Resources

Cochrane Evidence: Useful, Usable & Used – Is prostate cancer screening necessary?

Kyungmin’s second prize entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence on prostate cancer screening.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Evidence-based physical examination: sensitivity and specificity (part I).

Evidence-based medicine has a large variety of different sub-fields. Let’s begin our journey towards one of them – evidence-based physical examination.

Tutorials and Fundamentals

Why don’t we screen for more diseases?

There are over 100 diseases that the National Screening Committee in the UK considers screening for – but only a fraction of these are approved for one reason or another. This blog hopes to give an introduction to the issues with screening programmes, in particular those involved in detecting cancer.

Learning Resources

Private Health Screening: what to think about when you’re thinking about screening tests

Information for patients and members of the public in recognizing and interpreting how advertisements of screening tests can mislead them.