Tips and tricks for understanding and using SR results

✍ Scribed by Leontien Kremer; Virginia Moyer

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 75 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1557-6272
• DOI: 10.1002/ebch.9

✦ Synopsis

Relative risk, risk difference, and number needed to treat

Over the coming months, Evidence Based Child Health will publish a number of articles intended to help readers understand the results of systematic reviews and to translate those results to clinical practise. An adequate understanding of how to use estimates of effects reported in Cochrane systematic reviews is important for clinicians and patients who are involved in clinical decisions about treatment in children. In this first article we will focus on the concepts of relative risk, risk difference and number needed to treat. The information for the tips and tricks in this article are based on earlier papers, the Cochrane Handbook, and the collective experience of the editors in teaching evidence-based medicine (1,2).