Journal of clinical epidemiology
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Comparative Study
Condition-specific Western Ontario McMaster Osteoarthritis Index was not superior to region-specific Lower Extremity Functional Scale at detecting change.
We determined whether the sensitivity to change of the Western Ontario McMaster Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) physical function (PF) subscale, a condition-specific measure for persons with osteoarthritis of the hip or knee, was superior to a lower extremity region-specific measure, the Lower Extremity Functional Scale (LEFS), in persons with osteoarthritis of the hip or knee undergoing total joint arthroplasty. ⋯ The findings do not support the hypothesis that the WOMAC PF subscale is superior to the LEFS in detecting change.
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Systematic reviews aim to summarize the evidence in a particular topic area, giving attention to the identified methodologic quality of published research. Because research in a specific area may be susceptible to specific biases, it is assumed that the methodologic quality of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) of disease management cannot properly be measured with the existing methodologic quality assessment instruments. The purpose of this study was to describe to what extent existing instruments are useful in assessing the methodologic quality of HTA of disease management. ⋯ With its more specific characteristics, the HTA-DM addresses the problems mentioned. The HTA-DM is a reliable instrument for methodologic quality assessment of HTA of disease management in comparison with the other three instruments.
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The objective of this study was to develop a scoring system for identifying women with near-miss maternal morbidity, and differentiating these women from those with severe but not life-threatening conditions. ⋯ Near-miss morbidities identified using the scoring systems presented can be incorporated into clinical case review and epidemiologic studies to enhance the monitoring of obstetric care and to improve estimates of the incidence of life-threatening complications in pregnancy.
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Conventional graphs often include error bars around the group means. Regardless of what these bars depict, they are uninformative as to whether a difference between the groups is statistically significant. ⋯ This article suggests plotting the null bar or null zone: that is, the range or area in which the means of the two groups fall if the null hypothesis of no difference cannot be rejected. The bar and zone are simply derived from the confidence interval around the difference, obtained from the t-test.
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To determine if the quality of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) placebo controlled randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is related to the effect sizes they produce when the type of interventions and outcome variables are controlled. ⋯ Possible theoretical reasons for this unexpected positive relationship include (a) sampling error, (b) reduced within group variation, (c) fraudulent reporting, and (d) the restriction of the analyses to placebo controlled trial.