Main description:

Critical Appraisal of Medical Literature provides a step-by-step approach to help the reader reach a good level of proficiency in systematic critical appraisal of medical information. To this end, the book covers all the elements that are necessary to develop these skills and is a comprehensive guide to the subject.
The book is written in three parts. The first part focuses on the logical justification and the validity of medical information. Its chapters present basic working definitions and discussions on relevant basic topics of statistics and epidemiology. The second part focuses on the complementary aspects of critique, common study designs and articles whose main topics are treatment, diagnosis, prognosis, aetiology, reviews, medical guidelines, audit, and qualitative research. The third part presents some statistical techniques that are commonly used in published articles.
Critical Appraisal of Medical Literature is intended for those interested in developing critical appraisal skills such as psychiatric trainees preparing for the Critical Review Paper of the MRCPsych Examination in the UK, other practitioners as part of their preparation for examinations, and medical professionals and students as part of their introduction to aspects of systematic critical appraisal of medical information.

Contents:

Introduction. Part I. 1. Basic Concepts. 2. Probability. 3. Variables and Measurement. 4. Measurement Instruments. 5. Sampling and Design. 6. Bias. 7. Distributions. 8. Binomial and Normal Distributions. 9. Hypothesis Testing. 10. Errors and Sample Size. 11. Estimation. 12. Epidemiology. Part II. 13. Introduction to Critical Appraisal of Medical Literature. 14. Critical Appraisal of Different Study Designs. 15. Papers on Treatment. 16. Papers on Diagnosis. 17. Papers on Prognosis. 18. Papers on Aetiology. 19. Review Papers. 20. Papers on Guidelines. 21. Papers on Audit. 22. Papers on Qualitative Research. 23. Summary. Part III. 24. The z-Test and the t-Test. 25. Analysis of Variance. 26. Non-Parametric Tests. 27. Correlations, Regression and Prediction. 28. Multivariable Analysis. 29. Other Statistical Techniques. References. Index.