Author: Eugene Barsky

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Main Research

Epidemiology and Reporting Characteristics of Systematic Reviews

unique

This is a very important article, published in the most recent PLoS Medicine – a rising medical journal (that one day I believe would be as important as Lancet and Jama). The journal is using open access format – so that anybody on the planet could access important medical information for free!

The article itself, written by Canadian researchers from Ottawa, led by Dr. David Moher – “Epidemiology and Reporting Characteristics of Systematic Reviews” is extremely important and interesting.

The editorial piece for that issue – “Many Reviews Are Systematic but Some Are More Transparent and Completely Reported than Others” has a good summary of the findings:

Some of them include:

“There were clear differences in the quality of reporting between Cochrane and non-Cochrane SRs…”

“The quality of reporting in many of the SRs was disappointing. Despite the guidelines of the Cochrane Collaboration and the QUOROM (Quality of Reporting of Meta-Analyses) initiative [2], important items were frequently missing, again mostly from non-Cochrane reviews. ”

“It is Cochrane policy that published reviews should be regularly updated. One-third of the CDSR reviews in Moher’s sample were in fact updates. However, updating is uncommon elsewhere; in the Moher sample, only 2% of non-Cochrane reviews were updates. Related to this issue is the observation that outside of the Cochrane Collaboration none of the reviews were registered with a central body. Hence, it would be hard to locate and access updates even if they were done.”

In my workshops and teachings , I am frequently saying the Systematic Reviews are among the highest level of evidence in health sciences. David Moher’s study shows us that not always and not all reviews are the same.

Extremely interesting! I encourage you all to take a thorough look into this article – it is free full text!!

Viva to open access 🙂

** Photo by midnightvelvet59

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Main Research

Effect of respiratory muscle training on pulmonary function in preoperative preparation of tobacco smokers

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Here is a very recent article from Brasilian researchers published in Acta Cirurgica Brasileira, vol.22 no.2 – Mar./Apr. 2007

The purpose was to evaluate the effect of utilization of a specific training program of respiratory muscles on pulmonary function in tobacco smokers.

The protocol was developed in the Physiotherapy Laboratory of University Hospital (UH) for the Northern Region of Paraná. There is a detailed description of the protocol in the article.

They concluded that: “The application of the protocol of respiratory exercises with and without additional load in tobacco smokers produced immediate improvement in the performance of respiratory muscles, but this gain was more accentuated after 2 weeks of exercise.”

Here is the full text in PDF

** Photo by owen

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In the news Main

American Heart Association Scientific Statement advises: “start with physical therapy and exercise to relieve pain for patients with or at risk for heart disease”

swimming-exercise

American Heart Association (AHA) statement recommends doctors change approach to prescribing pain relievers for patients with or at risk for heart disease.

The February 28, 2007 statement says: “We advise physicians to start with non-pharmacologic treatments such as physical therapy and exercise, weight loss to reduce stress on joints, and heat or cold therapy.”

Moreover: “Many doctors should change the way they prescribe pain relievers for chronic pain in patients with or at risk for heart disease based on accumulated evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), with the exception of aspirin, increase risk for heart attack and stroke”

Here is the AHA statement.

Here is the statement as published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

** Photo by Claudia Schulz

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Main

Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Sciences Group (CPPSG) – new newsletter issue is up

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Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Sciences Group is keeping itself pretty busy. A new – March 2007 newsletter is up for your review. See it on their site here, it is Vol 3 Issue 2.

Personally, I liked the short piece by Neil Pearson on “The Hippocampus and Pain”.

Have a great read!

* Photo by djking

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Audiocasts / Podcasts Main Physiotherapy and Web 2.0

New Audiocast -> Qualitative Evidence in Practice: Appraising Evidence Developed Using Qualitative Inquiry

audiocasts

Here is a pretty new audiocast we recorded on March 8, 2007 as a part of the BC RSRnet Evidence Based practice series. This is session #5.

The session is presented by Dr. Judith Lynam, from UBC School of Nursing, who is Co-Director of Culture, Gender & Health Research Unit.

Not being a particularly ardent devotee of Qualitative research, I have to admit that this session is really engaging, and gives lots of good insight! Maybe because it is presented by a nursing professor (with me having a huge respect for this profession – well…I should – my wife – Elina Barsky is a nurse 🙂

You can access this particular session here – http://hdl.handle.net/2429/100

Alternatively, you can access all UBC Barber Learning Centre audiocasts this way:

1. Go to https://dspace.library.ubc.ca
2. Click on “Library” link under “Communities in DSpace”
3. Click on “The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre” link
4. You will see a small search box. Click on “Titles” button to list all files by titles or “Authors” file to list all files by their authors
5. When opening a particular record, just click on the relevant link to listen to an audiocast and view the presentations in PDF format.

Have fun!

* Photo by 416style

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Main Websites worth a click

Dream Anatomy – from the U.S. National Library of Medicine

pepper anatomy

Drawn mainly from the collections of the our colleagues at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present.

From their blurb: “The interior of our bodies is hidden to us. What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity, the body’s internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century-and the cascade of print technologies that followed-helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque — a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.”

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/

Thanks to David Rothman for the reminder :), very cool!

** Photo by Richard Pluck

Categories
Main Research

The role of exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes.

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This is from the series called “Cochrane for Clinicians: Putting Evidence into Practice”, published by the American Family Physician.

This short article from Vol. 75/No. 3 (February 1, 2007) tries to give an Evidence-Based Answer to a clinical question: What should physicians tell patients with type 2 diabetes about the role of exercise?

The authors cite a recent Cochrane review – Thomas DE, Elliott EJ, Naughton GA. Exercise for type 2 diabetes mellitus. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2006;(3):CD002968, and conclude that: “Regular exercise reduces A1C levels, adiposity, and triglyceride levels. However, no research has definitively proved a benefit of exercise on patient-oriented outcomes such as diabetes-related morbidity and mortality.”

Take a look on the full text here.

** Photo credits – k-sphotos’ photos.

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Fun Main

Help desk – Friday afternoon

** there is a video embedded in this post

Here is a piece of Friday fun, it looks that everyone and his uncle has already posted it, so, maybe it is our turn… Thanks to Rebecca Tunnacliffe for the link! I am very happy to see that my services are not used this way 🙂

Categories
Main Presentations Workshops

Introduction to Advanced Internet Searching workshop

* For those of you reading this via an online reader – there is a powerpoint embedded in this post :), click on the post to see it all.

Yesterday, I presented this workshop for the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies folks. It was quite an interesting session with people accross numerious disciplines attending.

We have had fun – I hope – playing with various Google commands and learning more about search.

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In the news Main

Virtual Physiotherapy for kids

virtual reality

Here is a short piece from ABC 7Online New York TV channel about turning physical therapy into fun and games so injured and sick children can better reap the benefits.

They say: “Right now, this type of therapy is used mostly with children as their expertise with video games makes them good candidates. But some adults use it too — mostly stroke patients.”

Looks pretty interesting, isn’t it? See the whole thing here (02:28 min).

** Photo by carf (used under Creative Commons)

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