Applicability: How well is your patient represented
by the participants in a study (or by a sizeable, separately
analyzed subset of the study participants)?
Impact: Would the study's results, if valid, make any
difference to your treatment recommendations?
If the study results favor one treatment over another, how large
is the difference in the benefits of the treatments being compared?
In other words, what is the CLINICAL significance of the difference?
Statistical significance does NOT equal clinical significance.
Validity:
Oxford Centre for EBM
critical appraisal
resources
Article by Trisha Greenhalgh, published in BMJ, concerning how to
read
systemic reviews and meta-analyses
