Journal of clinical epidemiology
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Review
Most meta-analyses of drug interventions have narrow scopes and many focus on specific agents.
To assess the extent to which meta-analysis publications of drugs and biologics focus on specific named agents or even only a single agent, and identify characteristics associated with such focus. ⋯ The scope of meta-analysis publications frequently is narrow and shaped to serve particular agents.
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Adjustment for morbidity is important to ensure fair comparison of outcomes between patient groups and health care providers. The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) in UK primary care offers potential for developing a standardized morbidity score for low-risk populations. ⋯ A simple nine-item score derived from routine primary care recording provides a morbidity index highly predictive of mortality and between practice variation in older UK primary care populations. This has utility in research and health care outcome monitoring and can be easily implemented in other primary and ambulatory care settings.