Recent trends suggest that clinicians should use evidencegenerated by sound scientific studies in the treatment of patients.This field of clinical epidemiology has been formalized and is referred to as evidence based ...Recent trends suggest that clinicians should use evidencegenerated by sound scientific studies in the treatment of patients.This field of clinical epidemiology has been formalized and is referred to as evidence based medicine.Recommendations from this field urge practitioners to use the best evidence available to make clinical decisions;category A veidence is from large well-performed randomized trials,category B evidence comes from smaller trials or from meta-analysis and category C evidence is the lowest and from case series,case reports and nonrandomized studies.Many studies on the same topic can be combined and analyzed using a method called meta-analysis.This technique collects all studies and carefully analyzes all data and the experimental methods utilized to generate this information.From the acceptable data,an odds ratio (OR) or risk ratio is calculated.If this ratio is 1 and the 95% confidence interval (CI) overlaps 1,there is no difference between the treatment and the control.If the odds ratio is different than 1 (and the confidence interval does not overlap 1,then the treatment is either better (or worse)than the control group.)Example：(1)OR=1.4(95%CI=0.8-1.9)=nor significant.(2)OR=1.4(95%CI=1.2-1.6)=significant.The advantages and disadvantages of this technique will be discussed.Examples will be given from the nutritional literature as to how to use this information in making decisions in the prescription of various types of nutritional support.展开更多
文摘Recent trends suggest that clinicians should use evidencegenerated by sound scientific studies in the treatment of patients.This field of clinical epidemiology has been formalized and is referred to as evidence based medicine.Recommendations from this field urge practitioners to use the best evidence available to make clinical decisions;category A veidence is from large well-performed randomized trials,category B evidence comes from smaller trials or from meta-analysis and category C evidence is the lowest and from case series,case reports and nonrandomized studies.Many studies on the same topic can be combined and analyzed using a method called meta-analysis.This technique collects all studies and carefully analyzes all data and the experimental methods utilized to generate this information.From the acceptable data,an odds ratio (OR) or risk ratio is calculated.If this ratio is 1 and the 95% confidence interval (CI) overlaps 1,there is no difference between the treatment and the control.If the odds ratio is different than 1 (and the confidence interval does not overlap 1,then the treatment is either better (or worse)than the control group.)Example：(1)OR=1.4(95%CI=0.8-1.9)=nor significant.(2)OR=1.4(95%CI=1.2-1.6)=significant.The advantages and disadvantages of this technique will be discussed.Examples will be given from the nutritional literature as to how to use this information in making decisions in the prescription of various types of nutritional support.
