Cochrane Db Syst Rev
-
Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Jan 2000
ReviewAngioplasty (versus non surgical management) for intermittent claudication.
Intermittent claudication is pain in the legs due to muscle ischaemia associated with arterial stenosis or occlusion. Angioplasty is a technique that involves dilatation and recanalisation of a stenosed or occluded artery. ⋯ These limited results suggest that angioplasty may have had a short term benefit, but this may not have been sustained.
-
Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Jan 2000
ReviewAudit and feedback versus alternative strategies: effects on professional practice and health care outcomes.
Audit and feedback has been identified as having the potential to change the practice of health care professionals. ⋯ It is not possible to recommend a complementary intervention to enhance the effectiveness of audit and feedback. Reminders might be more effective than audit and feedback to improve the delivery of some preventive services but the results are not striking. Few trials have investigated the effect of varying different characteristics of the audit and feedback process. Consideration should be given to testing the effects of modifying important characteristics such as the content, source, timing, recipient and format.
-
Carbamazepine and valproate are drugs of first choice for epilepsy. Despite the lack of hard evidence from individual randomized controlled trials, there is strong clinical belief that valproate is the drug of choice for generalized epilepsies and carbamazepine for partial epilepsies. ⋯ We have found some evidence to support the policy of using carbamazepine as the first treatment of choice in partial epilepsies, but no evidence to support the choice of valproate in generalized epilepsies, but confidence intervals are too wide to confirm equivalence. Misclassification of patients may have confounded our results, and has important implications for the design and conduct of future trials.
-
Cochrane Db Syst Rev · Jan 2000
ReviewEpidural versus non-epidural analgesia for pain relief in labour.
Epidural analgesia is effective in reducing labour pain, but the possible adverse effects are not clear. ⋯ Epidural analgesia appears to be very effective in reducing pain during labour, although there appear to be some potentially adverse effects. Further research is needed to investigate adverse effects and to evaluate the different techniques used in epidural analgesia.
-
When pregnant women near term lie in the supine position the uterus can compress the inferior vena cava, interfering with venous return to the heart. This can result in hypotension, reduced placental perfusion and decreased fetal oxygenation. ⋯ There is not enough evidence from these trials to evaluate use of lateral tilt during caesarean section.