Free access to abstracts of Cochrane Reviews, organised by review group, is offered here. These pages also supply subscription details, FAQ's and some technical support. This is the ninth in a series of 10 articles introducing non-experts to finding medical articles and assessing their value. The paper was written by Trisha Greenhalgh and was first published in the British Medical Journal. The second in a series of articles on meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal Education and Debate section during 1997.
Most resources listed have very full descriptions.
Randomized trials This Web site provides a list of randomized trials and meta-analysis on surgery based on scientific evidence, collated from English language publications. There are links to free Medline sites where the full papers can be accessed. This article from the journal Annals of Internal Medicine looks at the distinction between a systematic review and a practice guideline. It covers methods of developing guidelines, the role of evidence in the development of guidelines, how to use systematic reviews to build guidelines and clinical pathways, and the limitations of relying on the reviews. The site is provided by the American College of Physicians.