A user’s guide
Alejandro R Jadad
Director, McMaster Evidence Based Practice Center Co-Director, Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre Health Information Research Unit
Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
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Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are one of the simplest and most powerful tools in clinical research. Now that evidence based medicine is becoming widely accepted, healthcare practitioners from every sphere, from primary care to super specialties, need to know how to understand and use RCT findings.
In this superbly lucid explanation of RCTs, their benefits, pitfalls, and the ethical dilemmas involved, Alex Jadad distils his wide knowledge, based on years of work at the University of Oxford, and at the hub of research learning, McMaster University, into a simple question-and-answer format covering:
- types of RCTs
- bias
- quality assessment
- reporting and interpreting individual trials
- from individual to groups of trials - reviews, metaanlyses and guidelines
- from trials to decisions - the basis of evidence based health care
Making such concepts both simple to grasp and fascinating is an art that Alex Jadad has mastered, to produce a book that will be an invaluable companion to all those in health care who endeavour to make the best use of clinical research.
Home | Contents | Foreword | Introduction | Acknowledgments | How to order
© BMJ Books 1998. BMJ Books is an imprint of the BMJ Publishing Group. First published in 1998 by BMJ Books, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JR. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-7279-1208-9