Journal of general internal medicine
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Review Meta Analysis
SSRIs for hot flashes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials.
Hot flashes are the most commonly reported vasomotor symptom during the peri- and early post-menopausal period. ⋯ SSRI use is associated with modest improvement in the severity and frequency of hot flashes but can also be associated with the typical profile of SSRI adverse effects.
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Review Meta Analysis
Midodrine for orthostatic hypotension: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials.
To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of midodrine in orthostatic hypotension (OH). ⋯ There is insufficient and low quality evidence to support the use of midodrine for OH.
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Systematic review of preventive pharmacologic treatments for community-dwelling adults with episodic migraine. ⋯ Approved drugs prevented episodic migraine frequency by ≥50 % with no statistically significant difference between them. Exploratory network meta-analysis suggested that off-label angiotensin-inhibiting drugs and beta-blockers had favorable benefit-to-harm ratios. Evidence is lacking for long-term effects of drug treatments (i.e., trials of more than 3 months duration), especially for quality of life.
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Review Meta Analysis
Simulation-based training for cardiac auscultation skills: systematic review and meta-analysis.
The current review examines the effectiveness of simulation-based medical education (SBME) for training health professionals in cardiac physical examination and examines the relative effectiveness of key instructional design features. ⋯ SBME is an effective educational strategy for teaching cardiac auscultation. Future studies should focus on comparing key instructional design features and establishing SBME's relative effectiveness compared to other educational interventions.
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Review Meta Analysis
The validity of using analogue patients in practitioner-patient communication research: systematic review and meta-analysis.
When studying the patient perspective on communication, some studies rely on analogue patients (patients and healthy subjects) who rate videotaped medical consultations while putting themselves in the shoes of the video-patient. To describe the rationales, methodology, and outcomes of studies using video-vignette designs in which videotaped medical consultations are watched and judged by analogue patients. Pubmed, Embase, Psychinfo and CINAHL databases were systematically searched up to February 2012. ⋯ Analogue patients' evaluations of communication equaled clinical patients' perceptions, while overcoming ceiling effects. This implies that analogue patients can be included as proxies for clinical patients in studies on communication, taken some described precautions into account. Insights from this review may ease decisions about including analogue patients in video-vignette studies, improve the quality of these studies and increase knowledge on communication from the patient perspective.