Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Contributors
- 1 Introducing evidence-based anaesthesia
- 2 How to define the questions
- 3 Developing a search strategy, locating studies and electronic databases
- 4 Retrieving the data
- 5 Critical appraisal and presentation of study details
- 6 Outcomes
- 7 The meta-analysis of a systematic review
- 8 Bias in systematic reviews: considerations when updating your knowledge
- 9 The Cochrane Collaboration and the Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group
- 10 Integrating clinical practice and evidence: how to learn and teach evidence-based medicine
- 11 Involving patients and consumers in health care and decision-making processes: nothing about us without us
- 12 Evidence-based medicine in the Third World
- 13 Preoperative anaesthesia evaluation
- 14 Regional anaesthesia versus general anaesthesia
- 15 Fluid therapy
- 16 Antiemetics
- 17 Anaesthesia for day-case surgery
- 18 Obstetrical anaesthesia
- 19 Anaesthesia for major abdominal and urological surgery
- 20 Anaesthesia for paediatric surgery
- 21 Anaesthesia for eye, ENT and dental surgery
- 22 Anaesthesia for neurosurgery
- 23 Cardiothoracic anaesthesia and critical care
- 24 Postoperative pain therapy
- 25 Critical care medicine
- 26 Emergency medicine: cardiac arrest management, severe burns, near-drowning and multiple trauma
- Glossary of terms
- Index
6 - Outcomes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Contributors
- 1 Introducing evidence-based anaesthesia
- 2 How to define the questions
- 3 Developing a search strategy, locating studies and electronic databases
- 4 Retrieving the data
- 5 Critical appraisal and presentation of study details
- 6 Outcomes
- 7 The meta-analysis of a systematic review
- 8 Bias in systematic reviews: considerations when updating your knowledge
- 9 The Cochrane Collaboration and the Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group
- 10 Integrating clinical practice and evidence: how to learn and teach evidence-based medicine
- 11 Involving patients and consumers in health care and decision-making processes: nothing about us without us
- 12 Evidence-based medicine in the Third World
- 13 Preoperative anaesthesia evaluation
- 14 Regional anaesthesia versus general anaesthesia
- 15 Fluid therapy
- 16 Antiemetics
- 17 Anaesthesia for day-case surgery
- 18 Obstetrical anaesthesia
- 19 Anaesthesia for major abdominal and urological surgery
- 20 Anaesthesia for paediatric surgery
- 21 Anaesthesia for eye, ENT and dental surgery
- 22 Anaesthesia for neurosurgery
- 23 Cardiothoracic anaesthesia and critical care
- 24 Postoperative pain therapy
- 25 Critical care medicine
- 26 Emergency medicine: cardiac arrest management, severe burns, near-drowning and multiple trauma
- Glossary of terms
- Index
Summary
When making decisions in health care all relevant outcomes should be considered. Clinically relevant outcomes are patient orientated, and measure directly how a patient feels, functions or survives. Examples of clinically relevant outcomes in anaesthesia could be mortality, postoperative morbidity, postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) and postoperative pain. Other relevant outcomes relate to length of stay in hospital, intensive care admittance, quality of life measures, and costs.
Different types of trials measure different types of outcomes, and trial quality is an equally important factor in estimating treatment effectivity. Surrogate outcomes are sometimes used instead of the real outcome in question, because they save time, money and number of patients. Surrogate outcomes are, however, not very reliable and extreme care should be taken if a surrogate outcome measure is used as the base of clinical decisions.
Introduction
When we consider the implementation of an intervention in health care practice, we want to know how this affects our patients. The randomised controlled trial measures the effects of the intervention in question on the outcomes decided by the investigators. The optimal clinical trial explores the effects of a well-described, well-defined, clinically relevant intervention on all relevant outcomes, including benefits and harms, costs and ease of practice.
Keywords
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- Chapter
- Information
- Evidence-based Anaesthesia and Intensive Care , pp. 39 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006