I agree with Ahmed and go further. Their search and retrieval strategy
seems a little strange. Why did they search NHS Evidence which is a
means of searching the databases that they also searched? Similarly,
what was the Ovid data base they searched? I always thought Ovid was a
means of searching databases.
And then look at their inclusion criteria. These included the
availability of the study in abstract or full text. If it was
available only as an abstract, how did they manage to assess its
quality (by whatever means) and extract data?
It's a review, Jim (or Ulf), but not as we know it.
Kev Hopayian
On 12 May 2011, at 18:09, Ahmed M. Abou-Setta, MD wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have not read this article before and so I cannot comment on
> whether or not its conclusions are valid and mainstream, or
> controversial in nature. Even so, from the reporting on their
> methodology (note that I use the word 'reporting' and not 'conduct'
> since the latter is impossible to honestly gauge in this situation),
> the underlying methods used are 'Unclear'. It seems to represent a
> systematic review of the evidence, but little data is provided on
> exact search strategies, number of retrieved, excluded and included
> citations and reasons for exclusion (especially since it may seem
> that they cherry-picked studies that they felt had higher
> methodological quality), summary evidence (e.g. OR, RR, etc) from
> the primary studies since they decided early on that they were not
> going to meta-analyze data, etc.... In my humble opinion, due to the
> lack of obvious clear methodology, I would not consider this to be a
> proper systematic review, but rather a narrative review.
>
> Ahmed
>
>
>
>
>
> Ahmed M. Abou-Setta, MD, PhD
>
> Post-doctoral Fellow/ Project Co-ordinator
> University of Alberta Evidence-based Practice Centre (UA-EPC)
> Alberta Research Centre for Health Evidence (ARCHE)
> University of Alberta
>
> Aberhart Centre One, Room 8412
> 11402 University Avenue
> Edmonton, Alberta
> CANADA T6G 2J3
>
> Tel: (780) 492-6248
> Fax: (780) 407-6435
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Website: http://www.ualberta.ca/ARCHE/
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]
> ] On Behalf Of Ulf Eriksson
> Sent: May 12, 2011 9:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Chronic disease self management
>
> Dear friends of the list.
>
> A growing concern in the care of an aging population with increasing
> freq of chronic conditions, is how to help the patients help
> themselves. We have been keeping an eye on the development of the
> evidence-base for (or against) different initiatives for enhancing
> the patients' self-efficacy in handling their diabetes, COPD, post-
> treatment malignancies, chronic pain, etc etc
>
> Now recently our eyes fell on this publication:
> www.health.org.uk/publications/evidence-helping-people-help-
> themselves/
>
> Evidence: Helping people help themselves
> A review of the evidence considering whether it is worthwhile to
> support self-management
>
> Has anybody read this? How would you rate it?
>
> The fact that there was no quality weighting and that their method
> of rating/grading of the different studies is not quite transparent,
> isnt that a drawback?
>
> Is the 'Health Foundation' actually a stake-holder in this matter?
> They mention "Co-creating Health" which I know nothing about. Is
> there a conflict of interest in this review?
>
> Many of the results and considerations in the report are of great
> relevance and news-worthiness to us.
> How do you regard it?
>
> Any comment is helpful,
> Cheers
>
> Ulf Eriksson
> Karlskrona
> Sweden
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