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An interesting article

http://bit.ly/4LJQO

And on the last subject, perhaps it lacked the last words on my sentence, sorry. It should said

"should be replaced by systematic reviews when making clinical decisions"

I agree with Piersante that narrative reviews will not disappear, especially when answering background questions.



On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 5:40 AM, Piersante Sestini <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dr. Carlos Cuello wrote:
Another reason why narrative review articles should be replaced by systematic reviews
I think that there is a misconception here. Narrative reviews (such as textbooks chapters, for example) and systematic reviews are not mutually exclusive. They are just two radically different types of publication aimed to different kinds of information needs: background (narrative) or foreground (systematic).
You cannot get background information (general knowledge about a topic) by reading good systematic reviews focused to a single question: you need publications with a broader scope. And you shouldn't look for answers to foreground questions (answers to a specific problem) in  narrative reviews, regardless of ghostwriting:. Obviously, without good background knowledge you cannot  formulate  good foreground questions, and therefore narrative reviews cannot be replaced. After all, most of the more popular and useful articles about EBM are narrative reviews..

So, it is the information need to be addressed, not the possible robustness to ghostwriting, that should drive the choice of looking for different kinds of publications.

regards,
Piersante Sestini




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Carlos A. Cuello-García, MD
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