Introduction: Aggregation of research evidence to guide clinical practice is one of the main reasons for conducting studies that provide a synthesis of the literature, but it is not the only reason. Systematic reviews are designed to be methodical, explicit and replicable. Such studies may help to guide project development, by indicating new directions for further investigations and identifying...

BACKGROUND In medical research both propensity score methods and logistic regression analysis are used to estimate treatment effects in observational studies. From literature reviews it has been concluded that treatment effect estimates from both methods are quite similar. With this study we will show that there are systematic differences which can be substantial. METHODS We used a simulated ...

BACKGROUND Evidence of low end-of-life (EoL) care service use by minority ethnic groups in the UK has given rise to a body of research and a number of reviews of the literature. This article aims to review and evaluate literature reviews on minority ethnic groups and EoL care in the UK and assess their suitability as an evidence base for policy. METHODS Systematic review. Searches were carrie...

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Based on a policy initiative and the foundation of the Competence Centre for Integrated Care by the Austrian Social Security Institutions in 2006, the aim of the project was to identify and prioritise potential diseases and target groups for which integrated care models should be developed and implemented within the Austrian health system. The project was conducted a...

As public procurement research is fragmented in many sub-topics, a clear synthesis is lacking, which in turn inhibits the establishment of a clear body of knowledge. To start filling this gap, this systematic review provides an overview of the most influential literature in the field of public procurement. The findings are aimed at providing other researchers with relevant information to synthe...

Purpose: To address questions raised by T. Meline andW. E. Harn (2008) in their critique of our previous article (A. K. Bothe, J. H. Davidow, R. E. Bramlett, D. M. Franic, & R. J. Ingham, 2006). Method: Additional information is provided to address several issues raised by Meline and Harn. Results and Conclusions: Our previous systematic review omitted 1 relevant article about the use of olanza...

Policy-makers and managers have always used a wide range of sources of evidence in making decisions about policy and the organization of services. However, they are under increasing pressure to adopt a more systematic approach to the utilization of the complex evidence base. Decision-makers must address complicated questions about the nature and significance of the problem to be addressed; the ...

OBJECTIVE Despite the increasing dependence on systematic reviews to summarise the literature and to issue public health recommendations, the formal assessment of the reliability of conclusions emerging from systematic reviews has received little attention. The main goal of the present study was to evaluate whether two independent centres, in two continents, draw similar conclusions regarding t...

this case series aims to comprehensively introduce intentional replantation with a focus on its indications and case selection in endodontics. in all represented cases, calcium enriched mixture (cem) cement is used for root-end filling. this case series demonstrates twenty cases of ir and extraoral root-end resection and filling with cem cement. all the selected teeth had a failed endodontic tr...