Journal of clinical epidemiology
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The aim of this study was to determine the smallest worthwhile effects of two treatments for nonspecific low back pain (LBP). ⋯ People with chronic back pain need to see larger effects on pain of NSAIDS than physiotherapy to consider the effects of these interventions worthwhile. These estimates of the smallest worthwhile effect can be used to interpret the findings of clinical trials and to design adequately powered clinical trials.
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To assess whether the reported trial characteristics are associated with treatment effects on all-cause mortality within critical care medicine. ⋯ The results of this study highlight a substantial difference in treatment effect estimates between single-center and multicenter trials. Therefore, we recommend that results from single-center trials should be cautiously used for decision making.
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To assess the reliability of the Cochrane Risk of Bias (ROB) tool between individual raters and across consensus agreements of pairs of reviewers and examine the impact of study-level factors on reliability. ⋯ Low agreement has implications for interpreting systematic reviews. These findings suggest the need for detailed guidance in assessing the risk of bias.