Essential Evidence-Based Medicine

Dr. Mayer is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and the Theme Leader of the Evidence Based Health Care course at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. He has been practising emergency medicine for twenty-four years. For the last 10 years he has developed and taught a required four-year course called Evidence Based Health Care at Albany Medical College. He has been a tutor at Evidence Based Health Care seminars around the world and has spoken frequently about teaching Evidence Based Medicine to educators, medical school faculty, undergraduate medical students, and residents at conferences internationally and in the USA.

Preface; 1. A brief history of medicine and statistics; 2. What is evidence based?; 3. Causation; 4. The medical literature: an overview; 5. Searching the medical literature; 6. Study design and strength of evidence; 7. Instruments and measurements: precision and validity; 8. Sources of bias; 9. Review of basic statistics; 10. Hypothesis testing; 11. Type I errors and number needed to treat; 12. Negative studies and type II errors; 13. Risk assessment; 14. Multivariate analysis; 15. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs); 16. Scientific integrity and the responsible conduct of research; 17. Applicability and strength of evidence; 18. An overview of decision making in medicine; 19. Sources of error in the clinical encounter; 20. The use of diagnostic tests; 21. Utility and characteristics of diagnostic tests: likelihood ratios, sensitivity and specificity; 22. Bayes' theorem, predictive values, post test probabilities and interval likelihood ratios; 23. Comparing tests and using ROC curves; 24. Incremental gain and the threshold approach to diagnostic testing; 25. Sources of bias and critical appraisal of studies of diagnostic tests; 26. Screening tests; 27. Practice guidelines and clinical prediction rules; 28. Decision analysis; 29. Cost effective analysis; 30. Outcome analysis; 31. Meta-analysis; Appendix 1. Common medical journals; Appendix 2. Glossary; Appendix 3. Bibliography; Appendix 4. Levels of evidence and grades of recommendations; Appendix 5. Overview of critical appraisal; Appendix 6. Common statistical tests; Appendix 7. Useful Web sites; Appendix 8. Formulae; Appendix 9. Proof of Bayes' Theorem; Appendix 10. Balance sheet approach to calculating threshold values; Index.