Educators have recognized the need to apply evidence-based approaches to medical training. To do so, medical educators must have access to reliable evidence on the impact of educational interventions. This paper describes 5 methodologic challenges to performing systematic reviews of educational interventions for health care professionals: finding reports of medical education interventions, asse...

Buchler M, Bayle F, Meyer C, Trehet N, Daguin P, Renaudin K, Moreau A, Soulillou JP: Kidney and recipient weight incompatibility reduces longterm graft survival. J Am Soc Nephrol 21: 1022–1029, 2010 3. Shapiro R, Vivas C, Scantlebury VP, Jordan ML, Gritsch HA, Neugarten J, McCauley J, Randhawa P, Irish W, Fung JJ, Hakala T, Simmons RL, Starzl TE: “Suboptimal” kidney donors: The experience with ...

This study examined various factors that affect statistical power in randomized intervention studies with noncompliance. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, this study demonstrates how statistical power changes depending on compliance rate, study design, outcome distributions, and covariate information. It also examines how these factors influence power in different methods of estimating i...

O riginally characterized as “globules of his blood” in 1675 by the Dutch microscopist van Leeuwenhoek, the crucial role of erythrocytes, or red blood cells, in regulating normal human physiology was not appreciated until centuries later. In contemporary medical taxonomy, the construct of anemia equates to a reduction in red blood cell mass and the diagnosis is established using convenient sex-...

Combining and analyzing data from heterogeneous randomized controlled trials of complex multiple-component intervention studies, or discussing them in a systematic review, is not straightforward. The present article describes certain issues to be considered when combining data across studies, based on discussions in an NIH-sponsored workshop on pooling issues across studies in consortia (see Be...

This article reviews and evaluates the effectiveness of interventions aiming to encourage households to reduce energy consumption. Thirty-eight studies performed within the field of (applied) social and environmental psychology are reviewed, and categorized as involving either antecedent strategies (i.e. commitment, goal setting, information, modeling) or consequence strategies (i.e. feedback, ...

The objective of this review was to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of intervention programs for caregivers of stroke patients. A systematic search using Medline, PsychINFO, AMED and CINAHL till March 2003 was carried out and 22 studies were identified. Four types of support programs could be studied: providing specialist services, (psycho)education, counselling and social support...

Folate is the generic name for all derivatives of the B a controlled dietary intervention study that a diet high in vitamin with the biological activity of pteroylmonogdietary folate from vegetables and citrus fruit (560 mg/d) lutamic acid. Folic acid is the fully oxidised monoglutadecreased plasma total homocysteine concentrations and mate form of the vitamin, whereas the other naturally impro...

Hundred years ago Metchnikoff associated human health and particularly healthy ageing with a specific type of gut microbiota. Classical culture methods associated a decrease in bifidobacteria and an increase in enterobacteria with ageing. Modern molecular methods blurred this simple picture and documented a substantial inter-individual variability for the gut microbiome even when stratifying th...

Within the traditions of critical social theory and cultural criticism, there are many models of cultural studies. Both classical and contemporary social theory have engaged the relationships between culture and society, and provided a variety of types of studies of culture. From this perspective, there are neo-Marxian models of cultural studies ranging from the Frankfurt School to Althusserian...